The Christmas Variation
by surrexi
Summary: Jack wakes up just a tiny bit quicker at the Game Station, in time to witness the Doctor save Rose's life and to board the TARDIS with them when they leave. How will Jack's presence change the events that follow the Doctor's regeneration and the trio's subsequent arrival in London just before the Sycorax invasion?
1. Chapter 1

Jack stood straight and tall as the Daleks advanced on him. He hadn't gone down without a fight, and he wasn't going to go down running away either.

"Exterminate!" the lead Dalek said.

Jack stuck his chin out and puffed up his chest. "I kinda figured," he said, lacing his voice with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

There was a bright light, and the next thing Jack knew, he was waking up on the floor with a gasp. He glanced around wildly, but there were no Daleks in sight. With a groan, he got to his feet and staggered towards the hallway that led to the control room. He looked down and noticed piles of dust all around him.

Wondering if the Doctor had somehow managed to refine the delta wave so that it would only kill the Daleks, Jack rushed down the hallway.

"Doctor!" he yelled, skidding to a stop in the control room doorway. "Doctor, what-" He cut himself off mid-sentence and stared, slack-jawed and speechless for the first time in longer than he could recall, at the tableau in front of him.

Rose stood in front of the TARDIS, and the Doctor knelt at her feet, looking down at the floor. Tendrils of golden light poured through the TARDIS doors and emanated from Rose's body. Even her eyes were sparkling gold instead of her usual rich hazel.

"I can see everything," Rose said, and her voice sounded strange to Jack. It was as if someone else was speaking through Rose, or more specifically like someone else, some goddess, was speaking _with_ Rose, simultaneously and in harmony like they were one being. The Doctor was now gazing up at Rose. "All that is," Rose continued, "all that was... all that ever could be."

The Doctor shot to his feet. "That's what I see," he said, his voice tinged with wonder and horror in equal measures. "All the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?"

Jack stepped forward slowly. He was reasonably sure there was nothing he could do at the moment but he wanted to be ready if the Doctor needed him.

"My head," Rose said, and to Jack's ears she sounded more like Rose and less like the Rose-goddess hybrid. She also sounded scared.

"Come here," the Doctor said. Jack heard the smile in the Doctor's voice, and for the first time in hours Jack felt confident things were going to work out.

"It's killing me," Rose continued, still sounding terrified.

The Doctor took her hands in his and tugged her closer to him. "I think you need a doctor," he murmured. Before Jack had time to be proud of the Doctor for making a joke, he leaned forward and kissed Rose right on the lips.

Jack watched in shock as the golden light that was emanating from Rose and the TARDIS began to pour from her eyes to the Doctor's. When the stream of light stopped, Rose's eyes were back to normal whilst the Doctor's ice blue was obscured by gold. The two of them seemed to stare into each other for the space of a breath or two before Rose collapsed into the Doctor's arms.

"Rose!" Jack exclaimed. He lunged forward and slid the last few feet on his knees so that when the Doctor lowered Rose to the ground, he could place her into Jack's waiting arms. "Doctor, what's happened?"

The Doctor said nothing and straightened up, facing the TARDIS. He inhaled deeply, and then exhaled slowly and evenly. The golden light flowed from him back into the TARDIS, and as the last of it drifted through the doors, they shut quietly behind it, leaving the blue box looking completely normal. He took another deep, even breath, and a smile more contented than any Jack had ever seen on the Doctor's face caused small crinkles to appear at the corners of his eyes. He knelt down beside Jack and Rose and wordlessly reached out to stroke Rose's cheek.

Jack's arms tightened slightly around Rose's limp frame. "What the hell just happened, Doctor?" he asked grimly. "Is she going to be all right? Where are the Daleks?"

The Doctor raised his eyes to Jack's and winced visibly. He looked back at Rose, kept looking at her as he spoke to Jack. "She's going to be fine," the Doctor said quietly. "The Daleks are gone. She killed them all."

Jack looked down at the slight girl in his arms in shock. "_She_ killed them? She killed them _all_?" He looked back up at the Doctor. "_How?_"

"She looked into the heart of the TARDIS," the Doctor explained. "She absorbed the Time Vortex. Phenomenal cosmic powers and all that. She saved us." He got to his feet, opened the TARDIS doors, turned back to Jack and Rose, and stretched out his arms. "I'll take her," he said.

Jack started to say it was fine, he'd take her, but something in the Doctor's face had Jack biting back the words and handing over Rose after he'd gotten to his feet. The Doctor shifted her in his arms until her head was resting on his shoulder. He turned and carried her through the doors.

Jack moved to follow, but the Doctor looked over his shoulder with a carefully blank look that stopped Jack in his tracks. "If the TARDIS doesn't let you in," the Doctor said, "I can't make her."

Jack blinked at him, confused, but the Doctor simply continued into the console room, stooping down to lean Rose against one of the coral columns. Shaking his head, Jack stepped towards the doors. Unlike every other time he crossed the familiar threshold, he felt a strange sense of resistance, as if the air had gone thick. The Doctor stood next to Rose, arms crossed and face impassive, watching as Jack stepped forward. Narrowing his eyes, Jack murmured something indistinct and affectionate to the TARDIS, and although he still got the sense he wasn't entirely welcome, he was able to push through the doorway.

The TARDIS shuddered around them once, twice, then settled back down, the only indication that something was wrong being the change in pitch of her humming.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and crossed to the console. "Interesting," he said softly, stroking the controls soothingly.

Jack shut the door behind him and strode up the ramp impatiently. "Please explain to me what just happened," he said tightly.

"Unfortunately," the Doctor replied, "I haven't the time." He nodded towards Rose. "She's waking up," he said mildly. He began programming a trip into the Vortex into the controls and nodded towards Rose. "Go on, I'll take care of this and be with you in a mo'."

Jack shook his head in frustration, but knelt down at Rose's side anyway. He gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Hey, you," he said softly. "Wake up, sleepyhead. You're missing the We Saved the Universe party."

Rose stirred, blinked herself awake. She glanced blearily back and forth between Jack and the Doctor. "What happened?" she asked.

"I've been wondering that myself," Jack muttered under his breath.

The Doctor looked over at them from where he was leaning over the console. "Don't you remember?" he asked. Jack thought he detected a faint trace of surprise, but it was difficult to tell with the Doctor when he was being cagey, which he definitely was.

Rose sat up straighter and shook her head slightly as if trying to clear out cobwebs. "It's like... there was singing?" She glanced hopefully at Jack, who shrugged.

"I think I slept through most of the good stuff, doll."

"You're right, Rose," the Doctor said, uncharacteristically cheery-sounding. "I sang a song and the Daleks ran away."

Rose shook her head, dismissing this as patently false no matter what she did or didn't remember. "I was at home," she began, then shook her head again. "No, I wasn't, I was in the TARDIS, and..."

Although Rose was staring sightlessly at the grating trying to remember what had happened to her, Jack was watching the Doctor carefully, which meant that unlike Rose, he noticed an echo of the golden light from before shimmer along the Doctor's hand, before he flexed it a couple times and the light dissipated.

_Uh-oh_, Jack thought, memories of the legends about Time Lords coming back to him. _If that's what I think it is, things are about to get complicated._

"I can't remember anything else," Rose finally said. She looked up to find the Doctor watching her closely. Smiling, she glanced between him and Jack. "Well then, boys, aren't you gonna fill me in?"

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor said, using that special tone of voice he used when he named very special things. "And Jack Harkness," he added, and Jack was surprised to hear the same tone when the Doctor said his name as when the Doctor said Rose's name. "I was gonna take you so many places," the Doctor continued. "Barcelona," he said, "not the city Barcelona, the planet. You'd both love it. They've got dogs with no noses," he explained. He focused on Jack, a wry grin on his face. "Imagine how many times you'd end up telling us that joke, and it would still have been funny!"

Jack smiled, noting another faint streak of golden light racing from the Doctor's fingertips and up under the sleeve of his leather jacket. He knew what was coming; he knew what the Doctor was doing. He hoped that having him there would help make up for the fact that they'd never quite gotten around to explaining regeneration to Rose.

"Then why can't we go?" Rose asked, tilting her head to the side in curiosity.

"Maybe you will," the Doctor replied with a shrug. "And maybe _I_ will. But not like this," he finished. He looked back down at the TARDIS controls.

"You're not making sense," Rose said laughingly. She pushed herself to her feet and Jack stood with her, one hand on her waist in support and, though she hadn't realized it yet, comfort.

"I might never make sense again! I might have two heads. Or no head!" He laughed to himself, but Jack shook his head slightly. _Not helping, Doctor_, he thought. "Imagine me with no head," the Doctor muttered.

Rose grinned and nearly stepped forward, but then the Doctor looked back up at Jack and Rose, his face suddenly serious. "But it's a bit dodgy, this process. You never know what you're going to end up with. Jack understands," he added. "You've heard of it, I'm sure?"

"Yes," Jack said, nodding and squeezing Rose's waist slightly. "I have."

Suddenly, a violent burst of golden light pushed the Doctor back from the console. He doubled over, clutching his stomach and wincing in pain. Rose pulled away from Jack's light grasp and rushed toward the Doctor.

"Doctor!" she exclaimed, reaching out to touch him. He scrambled backwards.

"Stay away!" he cried out. "Keep her back, Captain," he added through clenched teeth. Jack stepped forward and placed comforting but restraining hands on Rose's shoulders.

"Tell me what's going on," Rose said firmly. "One of you tell me what's happening."

"I absorbed all the energy of the Time Vortex," the Doctor ground out. He made a visible effort to straighten up and lightened his tone. "No one's meant to do that!" Wincing again, he went serious. "Every cell in my body is dying."

"Can't you do something?" Rose exclaimed in horror.

"Yeah, I'm doing it now! Time Lords have this little trick, it's... sort of a way of cheating death. Except... it means I'm gonna change." He focused on Rose. "And I'm not gonna see you again. Not like this. Not with this daft old face."

He forced a laugh, and Jack leaned down to whisper in Rose's ear. "It'll be all right, I promise." Rose shook her head, still worried and confused.

"Before I go," the Doctor began, and Rose tried to jump forward, though Jack still kept her back.

"Don't say that!" she said sharply.

"Rose," the Doctor said, and something in his tone had Rose backing down and leaning against Jack.

"Before I go," the Doctor continued, "I just wanna tell you - both of you - you were fantastic." He smiled at the two of them, beamed really, and Jack felt like no commendation he'd ever received whilst working at the Time Agency had come close to giving him the same sense of satisfaction as the look of pride for the two of them on the Doctor's face. "Absolutely fantastic," he repeated. "And d'you know what?"

Rose shook her head wordlessly.

"So was I," the Doctor said, a huge grin spreading across his face. Jack and Rose couldn't help but smile in return.

Then streams of golden light exploded in all directions from the Doctor's body, streaming particularly from his arms, stretched out wide, and his head, thrown backwards. Rose yelped and pressed instinctively back against Jack. Neither Rose nor Jack could seem to tear their eyes from the incredible sight in front of them, however. The Doctor's hair lengthened, his face reshaped itself, and after a few moments, the golden light died away and in front of Jack and Rose stood a completely different man wearing the Doctor's clothes.

Jack thought that actually seeing regeneration in action was possibly more impressive and definitely more terrifying than reading about it or hearing about it in campfire stories. He couldn't imagine what was going through Rose's mind.

The new Doctor looked down at himself, bemused, before looking back up at Jack and Rose and grinning. "Hello!" he said brightly. "Okay, ooh," he added immediately, swallowing and running his tongue over his teeth experimentally. "New teeth," he muttered. "That's weird."

Jack felt himself smiling a little, and decided he was probably going to like this new Doctor.

"So, where was I?" the Doctor continued, glancing back and forth between Jack and Rose. "Oh, that's right! Barcelona!"

* * *

Rose leaned against Jack and watched incredulously as some skinny bloke in the Doctor's clothes bounded over to the console and began pressing buttons and pushing levers. He muttered about the coordinates he was setting as he did so, but Rose didn't really register what he was saying.

"Jack..." she whispered tentatively. "Jack, what happened?"

"It's fine," he said. "He's fine."

Whatever else Jack might have said was interrupted by the skinny bloke, who had bounced and danced his way back to standing in front of them and was beaming at them proudly. "Well then," he said brightly. "What do I look like?"

Rose gaped at him and shifted closer to Jack.

Before Rose or Jack could reply, however, the bloke held up his hands to prevent them from doing so. "No, no no, no no no no no no no. No, don't tell me!" He shook himself experimentally. "Let's see... two legs, two arms, two hands..." He circled one wrist with the other hand and flexed. "Slight weakness in the dorsal tubercle." His hands flew to his head. "Hair!" he exclaimed, clutching it in his fingers. "I'm not bald! Oh," he added, running his fingers through it, "big hair!" His hands drifted down to his sideburns, which were long. "Sideburns," he said delightedly. "I've got sideburns! Or really bad skin," he mused. He slapped his flat belly thoughtfully and murmured, "Little bit thinner... that's weird. Give me time, I'll get used to it."

Suddenly he froze with a look of wonder on his face. "I... have got... a mole. I can feel it, right between my shoulder blades, there's a mole." He rotated his shoulders a bit and then shrugged. "That's all right. Love the mole." Grinning, he focused on Rose. "Go on then," he said. "Tell me. What do you think?"

Rose blinked at him, unsure of herself and extremely confused. She shook her head slightly and then turned around and addressed Jack instead. "Who is he?"

"I'm the Doctor!" the skinny bloke said from behind her. She thought he sounded rather disappointed at her reaction, but she refused to face him again.

"No," she said to Jack, her voice gaining firmness. "Where is he? Where's the Doctor?" She gave Jack a split second to respond, and when he didn't, she whirled back on the skinny bloke. "What have you done to him?"

Crestfallen, the bloke looked between her and Jack. "You saw me, I... I changed," he said to her quietly. He gestured back to where the Doctor had exploded. "Right in front of you," he finished.

Rose took an angry step forward. "I saw him sort of explode," she insisted, "and then you replaced him, like a... a teleport or a transmat or a body swap or something." She gave him a cold glare. "You're not fooling me."

She turned back to Jack. "You said the Doctor is fine," she said, poking Jack in the center of his chest. "So where is he? And how do you know?"

Jack reached up and cupped Rose's cheek, his thumb making soothing strokes along her cheekbone. "He's right there, Rose. That's the Doctor."

Rose jerked backwards, shaking her head. _Not Jack too,_ she thought wildly. "No," she told him. "No!" She turned back to the skinny bloke. "Send him back," she said, her voice rising. "I'm warning you, send the Doctor back right now!"

"Rose," he said pleadingly, "it's me. Honestly, Jack's right, _it's me_." He took a deep breath and leaned forward slightly. "It's like I told you, I was dying. To save my own life I changed my body. Every single cell, but... it's still me."

Rose glanced over her shoulder at Jack, who nodded encouragingly. "You can't be," she whispered to the skinny bloke.

He stepped forward until they were standing close together and gazed steadily into her eyes. "Then how could I remember this? Very first word I ever said to you. Trapped in that cellar, surrounded by shop window dummies, oh, such a long time ago... I took your hand..." He paused and took her hands in his to emphasize the point. "I said one word," he continued, his voice dropping to an intense whisper. "Just one word, I said... run!"

Rose stared into his warm brown eyes, so different from the ice blue she was used to, but something inside her recognized something in those eyes, something deeper than color. Something like a soul. "Doctor?" she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Hello," he said with a grin.

Rose shook her head numbly and reached her hand back towards Jack. His fingers threaded with hers and he squeezed lightly in support.

The Doctor watched the gesture, the grin frozen on his face, before he leapt off to bound around the console again. "And we never stopped, did we? All across the universe. Running, running, running." He pointed at Jack. "Picking up strays."

"Hey!" Jack said, but the Doctor was still smiling and Jack didn't sound particularly annoyed.

"One time we had to hop," the Doctor continued. "All three of us, d'you remember? Hopping for our lives!" He began to hop up and down on one leg, the grin shifting from happy to just a little crazy. "Yeah? All that hopping? Remember hopping for your lives?"

Rose couldn't seem to react, couldn't make herself do anything other than edge closer to Jack. She could tell herself that the fact that Jack wasn't upset about what had just happened testified to the veracity of the skinny bloke's claim to be the Doctor with a new face, but of all the alien things she'd had to wrap her brain around since taking up with the Doctor, this one was the toughest.

At Rose's lack of reaction, the Doctor stopped hopping and trailed off his stream of babble. "No?" he asked tentatively.

"Can..." Rose swallowed, glanced at Jack, looked back at the Doctor. "Can you change back?"

"Do you want me to?"

Rose tried to read his expression but his face was new and so was the language contained in it, so she responded truthfully and hoped it wouldn't hurt him. "Yeah."

"Oh."

"Can you?"

"No," he said immediately, and Rose thought he sounded disappointed. She wondered if he was disappointed in himself for not being able to change back or in her for wanting him to in the first place. He looked down at the floor, and a muscle ticked in his jaw before he looked back up at her and Jack again. "Do you want to leave?" he asked.

Rose felt her jaw drop in shock. "Do you want me to leave?" She could hear an edge of panic in her tone and took a deep breath.

"No," the Doctor said at the same time as Jack said "Of course he doesn't."

Rose nodded slowly. At least she wasn't being kicked out of her home. Yet, anyway.

"But it's your choice," the Doctor continued. "If you want to go home..."

Rose said nothing, and she and the Doctor simply gazed at each other for a few moments until the Doctor turned to the console and began pressing buttons again.

"Cancel Barcelona," he said. He gestured Jack over to the other side of the console and the two of them slipped into their usual pilot and co-pilot rhythm. More evidence in support of the new face still belonging to the old Doctor, Rose supposed. "Change to London," the Doctor continued, "the Powell Estate, ah... let's say the 24th of December." He looked back up at Rose. "Call it a Christmas present."

He stepped back from the console and crossed his arms over his chest defensively. "There," he said. Jack watched the Doctor and Rose silently

"I'm going home?" Rose asked.

"Back to your mum. It's all waiting. Fish and chips, sausage and mash, beans on toast... no, Christmas! Turkey! Although... having met your mother... nut loaf would be more appropriate."

Jack snorted, and the Doctor grinned at him. "Just you wait, Captain. You'll see."

Rose felt the corner of her mouth turn up in a half-smile and quickly tried to reverse the impulse, but before she could school her features back to impassivity, the Doctor caught a glimpse of her.

"Was that a smile?"

"No," Rose returned.

"That was a smile," the Doctor said, a teasing lilt in his tone.

Rose shook her head. "No, it wasn't."

"Jack?" the Doctor said. "What say you?"

Himself smiling, Jack nodded. "You smiled," he said to Rose.

"No, I didn't," Rose insisted, barely resisting the urge to stamp her foot for emphasis. That, she knew, would only lead to gales of laughter from both men.

"Oh, come on," the Doctor said, suddenly irritated. "All I did was change, I didn't-" He broke off suddenly, gasping as the TARDIS jerked sharply before settling again.

"What?" Rose asked, confused.

"I said I didn't-" Once again the Doctor broke off on a gasp and the TARDIS shuddered around them. This time the Doctor also seemed to be racked by dry heaves.

Nimbly shifting her weight to keep from stumbling, Rose looked to Jack to see what he made of this new development. Unlike before, however, Jack looked alarmed.

The Doctor straightened back up, looking slightly shell-shocked. "Uh-oh," he murmured.

Rose edged cautiously towards him. "Are you all right?" she asked tentatively. She still wasn't entirely convinced he was who he said he was, but if he really was the Doctor then she certainly didn't want anything bad to happen to him.

Before the Doctor could reply, a small stream of sparkling golden light poured from his mouth.

"What's that?" Rose asked, as alarmed as Jack now.

"Oh," the Doctor said cavalierly, "the change is going a bit wrong, is all." He fell to his knees, grimacing as if in excruciating pain. Jack rushed around the console and knelt down next to the Doctor. He took one of the Doctor's wrists in his hand and felt for a pulse.

"Is there somewhere we can go?" Rose ventured. "I know Gallifrey's gone, but..." she trailed off, unsure if it was even wise for her to bring up his lost planet at a time like this.

With Jack focused on the Doctor's pulse and Rose focused on the Doctor's face, neither of them noticed him reach for a dusty lever on the console. "I haven't used this one in years," he said, sounding delighted. He flipped it, and whatever change it made caused the TARDIS to shake violently. Rose stumbled a little, grabbing the console to keep from falling over.

"What are you doing?" she exclaimed.

"Putting on a little speed!" the Doctor said maniacally. "That's it!" He continued to turn knobs, seemingly at random. Rose felt like each turn of a knob or push of a button caused the TARDIS to shake even more violently. The Doctor, for his part, was babbling nonsense about time limits.

Rose stumbled around the console until she reached Jack, who was watching the console screen carefully. "On the plus side," he said as the TARDIS jerked sharply sideways, "we're still headed for London on Christmas Eve."

After another sharp jerk, Rose glared at the Doctor. "Stop it!" she yelled.

The Doctor scowled at her. "Oh, don't be so dull! Let's have a bit of fun!" He punctuated his sentences with button-pushing. "Let's _rip_ through that vortex!"

Suddenly, he stilled, gripping the console for support and looking Rose straight in the eye. The warmth and soul she had seen earlier were back, and she felt the urge to cross to him and stroke his forehead comfortingly. "The regeneration's going wrong," he said through gritted teeth. "I can't stop myself." He grimaced in pain again and doubled over, one arm clutching at his midsection and the other still braced against the console. "Ah, my head," he groaned.

Just as quickly as he'd sobered, he became manic again. He shot up straight. "Faster!" he shouted. "Let's open those engines!"

Some kind of warning siren sounded through the console room, and Rose looked at Jack, fighting to keep the panic out of her voice. "What's that?" she asked him, speaking loudly to be heard over the din.

The Doctor popped up next to her like a deranged jack-in-the-box. "We're gonna crash land!"

Rose sighed in exasperation and turned back to Jack. "Can't you do something?"

Jack shrugged and shook his head as the Doctor pronounced that it was too late and they were out of control. He began to skip and jump around the console, laughing as he went. Rose staggered over to Jack. "He's going to kill us!"

Jack flipped a couple switches before shifting his focus from the console screen to Rose. "Actually, there seems to be a method to his madness. It's gonna be a hell of a bumpy ride, but I'm thinking it's reasonably likely we'll arrive in one piece."

A particularly violent shudder and jerk had Rose and Jack gripping the console for dear life, and Rose raised her eyebrows at Jack.

"Did I say reasonably?" he said. "I meant probably. Probably likely."

Rose shook her head, the ghost of a smile crossing her face as she braced for impact.


	2. Chapter 2

It was probably the wildest ride they'd had on the TARDIS since he'd joined up, and it was too damn bad, Jack thought, that that wasn't a euphemism. They'd materialized in the air and bumped into several buildings on the way down, the Doctor's crazed laughter punctuating each impact. Jack was also fairly certain they'd nearly run down a couple of innocent bystanders, one whom he thought might have been Mickey Smith.

They'd no sooner come to a stop than the Doctor gave a gleeful little hop and raced out the doors. Jack made no move to follow and neither did Rose. Instead, they took a moment to collect themselves.

"Well, that could have gone better," Jack said ruefully, hoping to coax a laugh from Rose. She was clearly not taking the regeneration well. Jack supposed that could mostly be placed at the feet of the Doctor - and to some extent Jack as well - for not telling her about it _before_ it became an issue. Especially since she had barely regained consciousness from absorbing the bloody Time Vortex when the regeneration happened. It was a difficult event to process even when one wasn't still regaining consciousness.

Rose managed a short and half-hearted chuckle. Wordlessly, Jack tugged her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. "It'll be okay," he said softly.

"If you say so," Rose muttered, the words muffled by Jack's clothing.

Jack glanced up at the monitor, which was helpfully showing what was happening just outside the doors. There was no sound, of course, but the Doctor was animatedly talking to Mickey and an older woman whose resemblance to Rose had Jack concluding fairly quickly that it was probably her mum. "Looks like I'm about to meet your mother," he said, gesturing to the monitor.

Rose pulled out of his embrace and looked up, sighing. "Just remember, her bark is worse than her bite." There was a beat, and then she added, "Mostly."

Jack was mid-chuckle when the Doctor suddenly collapsed. Without further comment, he and Rose immediately shot towards the doors, spilling out together.

"What happened?" Rose asked quickly. "Is he all right?" Jack dropped down next to the Doctor to check him over.

"I don't know," Mickey replied. "He just keeled over!"

"He's breathing," Jack said. "That seems like a good sign."

"But who is he?" Mickey asked, his tone suggesting that he was incredulous at the idea that Rose was now travelling with a _third_ bloke. He glanced at the TARDIS doors, still ajar behind Rose and Jack, obviously expecting the Doctor to come barreling out after them. "Where's the Doctor?" he added.

"That's him," Jack said, getting to his feet and gesturing at the prone form at their feet. "That's the Doctor."

"What d'you mean 'that's the Doctor'?" the woman Jack had pegged as Rose's mum asked, a shrill edge to her voice. "Doctor _who_?"

Rose shrugged. "He's _the_ Doctor. The same Doctor. Somehow. I don't understand it." She jerked her thumb at Jack. "He seems to, though."

"And who are you?" Rose's mum asked sharply, poking Jack in the center of his chest. "What are you doing in that box?"

Jack put on the best charming grin he could manage under the circumstances and held out his hand for Rose's mum to shake. "Captain Jack Harkness," he said smoothly.

"Jackie Tyler," she said, taking his hand. "Rose's mum."

"Nice to meet you, Jackie Tyler," Jack said, still smiling. "I'm traveling with Rose and the Doctor."

"Yeah," Jackie said, finally pulling her hand out of Jack's. "Mickey mentioned you. Didn't mention you were so good-looking though."

Jack turned to Mickey. "That's the most important part," he said. "What're you leaving that out for?" He offered his hand to Mickey for a shake, and after a slight hesitation, Mickey gripped Jack's hand and shook it briefly.

"Captain," he said.

"We should get him in to the flat," Rose interrupted from her position next to the Doctor. "People are getting curious," she added, gesturing towards a couple teenage boys standing at the mouth of the alley where the TARDIS had crashed. She stepped over to the TARDIS and pulled the door the rest of the way shut as if to emphasize her point.

"I'll get the feet," Mickey offered, resigned. "You get the shoulders?" he asked Jack.

Jack shook his head. "I can get him." He hoisted the Doctor up onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "It's undignified," he said, "but I don't think he's in any condition to mind, do you?"

Mickey chuckled. "'Spose not. Come on then."

They made their way up to the Tylers' flat, telling anyone who gave them interested enough inquisitive looks that the Doctor'd had a bit too much to drink and they were taking him up to sleep it off.

Jack deposited the Doctor on the bed in what he assumed was Jackie's room - Rose's room, he thought, would have more pink. He surveyed the Doctor's jeans, jumper, and leather jacket and noted a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.

"We should get him into different clothes." He looked at Mickey. "You think you've got some pajamas or something that would fit him?"

Mickey shook his head. "I don't wear pajamas," he said.

Jack waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Is that so?"

Rose slapped his shoulder lightly. "Oh, come off it," she said. "There's a time and a place."

Jackie, who had turned to rummage in her dresser when Jack asked Mickey for pajamas, returned to the side of the bed holding out a pair of light-colored striped pajamas. "Will these do?"

Rose gaped at her mother, and Jack adopted a businesslike manner. "Right, Rose and I'll take care of this," he said, taking the pajamas from Jackie and shooing she and Mickey from the room. Over protests from both of them, Jack shepherded them outside the door and shut it. A thought occurred to him, and he opened it again. "I don't suppose either of you have or could find us a stethoscope? Quick as you please," he added, and shut the door again without waiting for an answer.

He returned to Rose's side, dropped the pajamas on the bed next to the Doctor, and reached out to gently cup Rose's face.

"How are you holding up, honey?" he asked. She closed her eyes and leaned slightly into his touch, a small smile gracing her face. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.

"I'll be fine," she said firmly. "The question is whether or not _he'll_ be fine." She sat down on the bed at the Doctor's feet and began untying his boots. "Let's get him into those pjs," she added.

They worked together in companionable silence, stripping the Doctor down to his skivvies - "Boxer briefs, I should have known," said Jack - and wrestled him into the men's pajamas Jackie had provided. When they finished, Rose sat down next to the Doctor, her hand lying just next to his without touching it, as if she wasn't sure she ought to take it. Not for the first time since he realized the Doctor was about to regenerate, Jack wondered how they were going to fix the fact that they hadn't told Rose about it beforehand, and how difficult fixing it would be.

Deciding it was best to begin as you meant to go on, he touched Rose's shoulder gently. "I'm sorry neither of us told you about regeneration," he said softly. "We get into enough life-threatening scrapes. One of us should have thought to tell you."

Rose looked at Jack over her shoulder, resting her chin on his hand. "How'd you know, anyway?"

"Time Lords are the stuff of legend where I'm from," he said simply. "And they were well known to the Time Agency."

Rose nodded slowly. "You're right," she said finally. "You should have told me."

Jack was saved from having to come up with a reply by a knock on the door, quickly followed by Jackie's entrance into the room. She narrowed her eyes at the sight of Jack with his hands on Rose, but she didn't comment. She brushed past him and sat down on the bed facing Rose, handing her the stethoscope.

"Here we go," she said. "Tina the cleaner's got this lodger, medical student. And she was fast asleep, so I just took it."

Rose shook her head and put the stethoscope in her ears.

"I still say we should take him to hospital," Jackie added.

"Can't," Jack said.

Rose nodded when her mum looked like she was going to object further. "They'd lock him up," Rose said. "They'd dissect him. One bottle of his blood could change the future of the human race. Just shush," she added, forestalling a reply from Jackie.

Rose readjusted the stethoscope in her ears and placed the end of it on the left side of the Doctor's chest. Jack waited, watching as Rose tested both sides of the Doctor's chest. She looked up at Jack. "Both working," she said simply. Jack sighed, relieved.

"What d'you mean, both?" Jackie asked, surprised.

"He's got two hearts," Rose explained.

"Oh, don't be stupid," Jackie replied contemptuously.

"He has!" Rose insisted. She pulled the stethoscope off of her head and tossed it down on the bed next to the Doctor. Rising to her feet, she stretched a little.

"I'll watch him," Jack offered, "if you want to get some rest, change your clothes, whatever."

Rose briefly linked her fingers with Jack's and squeezed. "Thanks," she said. "It's been a long day, hasn't it?"

Jack let out a rueful half-laugh. "It has at that," he murmured.

Jackie, who had been looking at the Doctor thoughtfully, piped up with "Anything else he's got two of?"

Rose sighed in exasperation. "Leave him alone," she said sharply, and left the room.

Jackie peered at the Doctor one last time before getting to her feet. She fixed a hard glare on Jack. "Don't think I'm done with you, either."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jack said good-naturedly, smiling at her as she left the room. She shut the door behind her. Jack rolled his shoulders and stretched out his neck before sitting down in the spot on the bed Rose had vacated.

"Knew I'd get you into bed eventually, Doc," he said with forced cheerfulness. "Of course, I had hoped you'd be conscious when I did." He gripped the Doctor's hand in both of his own. "You know Rose and I will be stuck here with her mum if you don't wake up. You don't want to make me live with Rose's mum, do you?"

Jack was silent for a moment, wished the Doctor would wake up and talk to him. Tell him what to say to Rose to make things right, what to do for the Doctor to make him right. "I'll get 'round her, though," he continued. "I'm good with mothers." He grinned. "Speaking of which, did I ever tell you about the time I had drinks with the King of Zyklonia's mum? She was quite a woman."

Jack sighed. "Rose is quite a woman. You still need to explain to me precisely how she got back and saved our asses. Especially mine," he added, remembering facing down a Dalek and the sound of its laser charging up before firing. "I suspect you have to explain it to her, too. She's not happy with us for not warning her about regeneration. I want to fix that, but it'd be easier if you were awake."

It surprised him a little, the intensity with which he wanted to repair the damage to the relationship between the Doctor and Rose and himself. Jack had traveled with others before, had had partners at the Time Agency and been part of spaceship crews before becoming a Time Agent. Sitting on the bed next to the unconscious Doctor, Jack realized that it hadn't even crossed his mind to abandon Rose and the Doctor when things had gone pear-shaped at the Game Station, despite the fact that his vortex manipulator had been sitting in his room back on the TARDIS. He wondered if he'd have felt quite this loyal to anyone else before and thought maybe he hadn't, not even at the Time Agency before they'd wiped away two years of his life.

He'd never felt so much like he belonged before, though, and he figured that was the heart of the matter. Even at the Time Agency, where he'd felt - at first, anyway - like he was serving a greater good and doing important work, he still had felt a gnawing sense of things being not-quite-right. He had always had itchy feet and wanderlust, and until he stepped off of his self-destructing stolen ship and onto the TARDIS, nothing he'd done had made him feel like he'd reached his metaphorical destination.

Then he met the Doctor and Rose, and even as he watched the two of them dance around the console to music from Earth's 1940s, he had felt something inside him shift. He'd barely known them, but something inside of him had recognized them nonetheless.

He still wanted to travel, to see the universe. The beautiful thing about the Doctor and Rose was that they offered him the chance to do so while still belonging somewhere concrete and permanent.

"You're gonna have to get through this, Doc. You don't want me piloting the TARDIS by myself, after all."

The only response from the Doctor was a small stream of golden light issuing from his mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

While Jack kept vigil at the Doctor's bedside, Rose and Jackie were in the kitchen. Rose was rummaging in the fridge. She wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd had a proper meal, between the events at the Game Station and the fact that when the Doctor had sent her home she'd been too upset to eat anything. Rose spotted a pork pie and reached for it.

"How can he go changing his face?" Jackie asked abruptly. Rose remained silent, shutting the fridge door and reaching toward the silverware drawer for a fork. "Is that a different face or is he a different person?" Jackie continued.

"How should I know?" Rose exclaimed sharply. She set her pork pie and fork down on the table across from her mum and took a deep breath. "Sorry," she said, trying to be calm. It wasn't her mum she was mad at, after all.

Jackie nodded at her. She might be difficult to deal with sometimes, Rose mused, but her mum was pretty great at understanding how Rose was feeling. Rose sat down at the table and took a bite of pie before attempting to continue the conversation. Jackie waited with uncharacteristic patience, giving Rose her space.

"The thing is," Rose finally said, "I thought I _knew_ him, Mum." She felt her eyes fill with tears. "I thought me and him were…" she trailed off, unable to quantify precisely what she thought she and the Doctor were or had been. "And then he goes and does _this_," she said, her voice trembling. Annoyed with herself for crying, she sniffed and wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her jumper. "I keep forgetting he's not human," she muttered.

Her mum continued to look at her steadily and without (much) judgment. Giving herself a mental shake, Rose forced herself to smile at Jackie. She reached across the table and covered Jackie's hand with her own. "The big question is," she said with manufactured brightness in her voice, "where'd you get a pair of men's pajamas from?"

Jackie pushed her chair back from the table and rose, turning to fiddle aimlessly with something on the counter. "Howard's been staying over," she said mildly.

"What, Howard from the market?" Rose asked, slightly incredulous. "How long's that been going on?"

"A month or so," Jackie said. "First of all, he starts delivering to the door and I thought, 'that's a bit odd.'" She shook her head, a hint of a smile on her face. "Next thing you know it's a bag of oranges-"

Rose suddenly became aware that she recognized one of the voices issuing from the television, which had been left on in the living room as they'd attended to the Doctor. "Is that Harriet Jones?" she asked, interrupting her mother mid-sentence. She shot to her feet, leaving her pork pie forgotten on the table.

"Oh, never mind me," Jackie muttered, trailing after Rose into the living room.

"What's she doing on the telly?" Rose asked, staring at the television screen.

"She's Prime Minister now," Jackie explained. "I'm eighteen quid a week better off," she added. "They're calling it Britain's Golden Age." Jackie grinned then. "I keep on saying 'my Rose has met her'."

Rose grinned, her first genuine smile in hours. "Did more than that," she said, pride and nostalgia coloring her voice. "Stopped World War III with her. Harriet Jones…" The reporter on TV asked Harriet about something called the Guinevere I Space Probe being a waste of money and the look on Harriet's face was indignant.

"Now, that's where you're wrong," she said briskly. "I completely disagree if you don't mind."

Rose chuckled a little at that. It was so very much like the woman she remembered fighting the Slitheen with.

"The Guinevere I Space Probe represents this country's limitless ambition," Harriet continued. "British workmanship sailing up there among the stars."

The news cut to a shot of a jittery, nervous-looking man giving a press conference. He was saying something about the spirit of Christmas and rejoicing and miracles, but Rose's stomach growled, reminding her of her abandoned pork pie.

"Harriet Jones," she muttered again, turning back to the kitchen.

Rose was nearly finished with her pork pie when Jack appeared the in the doorway. She scanned his face anxiously, looking for signs that the Doctor had taken a turn for the worse. "Is he-"

"He's the same," Jack answered before Rose could finish the question. "He seems pretty stable at the moment," he added. "With any luck he's just in a standard healing coma and he'll come out of it in a relatively short time."

"There's nothing standard about a coma," Jackie muttered.

Jack shrugged. "There is if you're a Time Lord," he said good-naturedly. "According to the data the Time Agency had about them, it was a pretty normal response to a difficult regeneration."

"Would've been nice," Rose said under her breath, "if you'd shared some of that data with me before it became an issue."

Jack grimaced, but simply murmured an apology and gave Rose a contrite look.

Rose shrugged, deciding it was mostly the Doctor's fault anyway, so there was no reason to continue to punish Jack for it. "Are you hungry, Jack? There's stuff in the fridge, and I can get you some tea if you like."

"A little food would be great, thank you," he said. "Whatever you've got, I'm not picky."

There was a knock on the door of the flat and then Mickey let himself in. He'd gone back to his own flat to change his clothes and pick up his computer. "I'm back," he announced unnecessarily. Rose heard a thump as he dropped his stuff in the living room on his way to the kitchen. "How is he?" he asked upon entering the room.

"The same," Rose said, and busied herself with sorting out a pork pie for Jack.

"Listen," Mickey said, "I was thinking."

"Sounds dangerous," Jack said teasingly. He gave Rose a wink as she set his pork pie in front of him and she smiled slightly and shook her head.

"Shut up," Mickey said mildly as Jack immediately began to wolf down his pie. "Anyway, I was thinking that we should go out, do a bit of shopping."

Rose rolled her eyes. "You just want to make sure you get presents from us and figure we don't have any since we didn't exactly plan to come here beforehand."

Mickey grinned. "Maybe. But you've always liked the high street at Christmas anyway. Come on, it'll make you feel better."

Rose sighed. She supposed it would be nice to do a proper Christmas - or at least as much as they could with the Doctor in some sort of healing coma in her mum's bedroom - since they were here anyway. And maybe they could stop at a chip shop while they were out. She could use a nice helping of chips after the day she'd had.

"What do you think?" she asked Jack. "Want to do a bit of shopping? Mum can stay with the Doctor and call us if he gets worse."

Jack shoveled the last of his pork pie into his mouth and nodded. "Sure, sounds fun," he said once he'd swallowed his food.

After stopping by the TARDIS so that Jack could pick up a coat, the three of them headed off to the high street. It was quite crowded, thanks to the fact that it was Christmas Eve. Rose shoved her hands in her pockets in an attempt to keep them warm, and at that point it occurred to her that she didn't have any money with her - it was not generally something they worried about on the TARDIS.

"Jack, I don't suppose you've got any money," she said. Jack shook his head.

"Nope. We don't generally need it, do we?"

Rose chuckled. "Guess not. Looks like you won't be getting any presents after all, Mickey."

Mickey shook his head. "I'll cover you. What d'you need, twenty quid?" He rifled through his wallet and pulled out a wrinkled note. He held it out to Rose.

"Do you mind?" she asked, taking the note from him. "We'll pay you back."

"Call it a Christmas present," Mickey replied.

"I'm all out of sync," Rose said. "Don't you think so, Jack? We forget about Christmas and things most of the time on the TARDIS. It's like they don't exist."

"It's like being timeless," Jack suggested. "Time's all relative, anyway."

"Oh, yeah, that's fascinating," Mickey said, frustration edging his mostly-jovial tone. "'Cos I love hearing stories about the TARDIS. Oh, go on, Rose, tell us another one 'cos I, wow, I could listen to it all day. TARDIS this, TARDIS that…"

Rose lightly slapped Mickey's shoulder, amused. Jack, she noted, looked slightly annoyed, so Rose made sure her tone was light when she said "Shut up!"

"Oh! One time, in a biiiiiig yellow garden, full of balloons-"

"I'm not like that!" Rose insisted.

"Oh, you so are," Mickey replied. He gestured at Jack. "At least he tells stories from before he started tagging along with you two."

Jack held his hands up. "Hey, leave me out of this. This is between you two."

"I must drive you mad," Rose said, bumping Mickey's shoulder with her own. "I'm surprised you don't give up on me." The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she flashed uncomfortably back on the last time she'd seen him, in Cardiff, and he'd left her without saying goodbye. Mickey didn't seem fazed, however.

"Oh, that's the thing, isn't it?" he said proudly. "You can rely on me. I don't go changing my face."

Jack frowned. "Would you rather he had died and left us stranded in the middle of the Time Vortex, Mickey?" Jack asked coldly. "Because that was the alternative."

Mickey looked suitably chastised, and Rose felt slightly guilty that she's been about to agree, if half-heartedly, with Mickey.

"What if he's dying?" she asked, unable to hold in the words. She looked at Jack imploringly. He was about to reply when Mickey jumped in front of Rose and grabbed her hands.

"Okay!" he said, slightly exasperated. "Just let it be Christmas!" he added. "Just for a bit. You and me… and Jack… and Christmas."

"Sorry," Rose murmured. "I'm sorry."

"No thinking about the Doctor, no monsters, no life-or-death."

"Okay," Rose said. "I'll try."

"Promise?"

Rose glanced at Jack. He took her hand and began to pull her down the street. "She said we'll try," he said testily.

Mickey scrambled after them. "Right," he said as he pulled even with them. "What do you want to get for your mum?" he asked Rose. He continued talking, babbling about all the time he'd been spending with Jackie since the last time Rose had been home. But Rose and Jack were no longer listening, as both of them were concentrating on a small brass band in which all of the players were wearing creepy Santa masks.

"They're weird, right?" Rose whispered to Jack. "It's not just me?"

"Definitely off," Jack affirmed.

Suddenly, flames began to shoot out of their trumpets. Amidst the screams of the other shoppers, Rose yelled for Mickey, grabbing his wrist and dragging him along with her and Jack as they took cover behind a market stall.

The Santas looked around, shooting indiscriminately as they scanned the crowd for something - or someone.

"It's us," Rose said, alarmed. "They're after us!" The Santas caught sight of the trio and blasted the stall behind which they were hiding.

"Let's go!" Jack shouted, instinctually taking charge of the situation. They ran down the street, away from the band of Santas, who pursued them. Jack dodged around passersby and other things blocking their path, trusting Rose and Mickey to follow.

"What's going on?" Mickey asked frantically. "What've we done?! Why are they after _us_?!"

As they approached a cross street, a taxi pulled up, and Jack hailed it. As they piled in the back of the cab, Rose answered Mickey's question.

"They're after the Doctor," she said matter-of-factly, as if they weren't in the middle of running for their lives away from a murderous brass band of Santas.

Mickey threw up his hands. "I can't even go shopping with you! We get attacked by a brass band!"

As the taxi pulled away from the curb, Rose took out her phone. "Who're you phoning?" Mickey asked.

"Mum," she said. "They might already know where I live." Rose tapped her fingers impatiently on her knee, willing Jackie to pick up. "Mum, get off the phone!" she muttered furiously at her mobile when all she heard was a busy signal.

"Who were those Santa things?" Mickey asked, directing his question at Jack.

Jack shrugged. "Dunno, never seen 'em before. Shiny bit of tech, though." He shifted his position so that he could wrap an arm around Rose's shoulders. "Definitely after us, though, and since the two of you are regular old citizens and there shouldn't be any records of me around yet, we can only assume they're really after the Doctor and trying to get to him through us."

"Because today wasn't already long enough," Rose said, dropping her head down onto Jack's shoulder.

"No rest for the wicked," Jack said lightly. He pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head and exchanged concerned looks with Mickey.

A few tense minutes later, the taxi pulled up in front of the Powell Estate. Mickey handed the driver a couple of notes and told him to keep the change, and then he, Jack, and Rose piled out of the cab. Their feet had barely hit the ground before they took off at a run towards Rose's building.

* * *

**Note:** Bit of a cliffhanger there, sorry! It was the best place to break things up, though... and I promise a nice long next chapter. Also, although I feel like the standard "the source material isn't mine" disclaimer is implied in all fanfic posting, I would like to mention since I haven't already that obviously I have pulled some dialogue straight from the episodes _The Parting of the Ways,_ the Children in Need special, and _The Christmas Invasion_, and said dialogue belongs to Russell T Davies; I'm just using and modifying it for fun and no profit ;)

Thank you so much for the follows/favorites and reviews y'all have left so far, I really appreciate it! I hope you continue to enjoy the fic :D


	4. Chapter 4

Jack raced up the stairs behind Rose and Mickey, instinctually covering the rear in case they had been followed, despite the fact that he was currently weaponless. He and the Doctor had reached a bit of an unspoken compromise regarding whether or not Jack was armed. He didn't make a habit of carrying a weapon when they weren't in peril, and the Doctor didn't make him stop carrying a weapon if they _were_ (and Jack managed to get his hands on one) - as long as Jack didn't use it unless he had to.

Jack thought this was still a bit constricting, but he'd seen enough violence in his life to understand why someone who had seen as much of it as the Doctor had would be so vehemently opposed to indiscriminate use of weaponry.

Jack also refrained from pointing out that the Doctor had weaponized his sonic screwdriver more than once in their acquaintance.

At any rate, as he scaled the stairway of the Powell Estate behind Rose and Mickey, he found himself wishing for a decent sonic blaster, or at least a garden-variety pistol. Even the sonic screwdriver was back at the flat, sitting on Jackie's bedside table next to its sleeping owner.

The trio burst through the door to Jackie's flat to find Jackie on the phone. Rose raced over to her, shouting "Get off the phone!"

"It's only Bev!" Jackie said. "She says hello."

Rose grabbed the phone from her mother. "Bev? Yeah, look, it'll have to wait." She hung up the phone and addressed everyone. "Right, it's not safe, we've gotta get out. Where can we go?"

"My mate Stan, he'll put us up," Mickey suggested.

"That's only two streets away!" Rose turned and focused on her mum. "What about Mo? Where's she living now?"

Bewildered, Jackie shook her head and shrugged. "I dunno, Peak District."

"Okay, we'll go to Cousin Mo's then," Rose said decisively.

"It's Christmas Eve," Jackie exclaimed, and although she didn't stomp her foot Jack felt like the act was implicit in her tone. "We're not going anywhere! What are you on about?"

Rose opened her mouth to reply, but her attention was caught by something in the corner of the room. "Mum…" she said, tone cautious.

Jack turned and followed Rose's gaze, seeing the new Christmas tree in the corner of the living room. Jack bit back a sigh. Things were about to get more interesting, and he still didn't have a weapon.

"Where'd you get that tree?" Rose asked Jackie. Jackie tilted her head and gave Rose a blank look. "That's a new tree," Rose elaborated, pointing at it. "Where'd you get it?"

"Well, I thought it was you!" Jackie said indignantly.

"How could it be me?" Rose asked, voice incredulous.

Jackie shrugged. "Well, you went shopping, there was a ring at the door, and there it was!"

Jack edged closer to the tree, cautious. "It wasn't us," he said tensely.

"Then who was it?" Jackie asked, still bewildered.

When Jack was a few feet away from the tree, it lit up suddenly on its own. "Shit," he muttered under his breath, even as behind him Rose muttered, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

Jack backed away, keeping himself between Rose and Jackie and the tree. He made mental note of Mickey's position in the room, behind Jack and to his right. The tree began to spin and play a manic rendition of "Jingle Bells." Jack shook his head. _Of all the ridiculous attacks we've ever sustained_, he thought,_ this has to be the most ridiculous of them all_. As it spun faster and faster, the tree hovered a few inches above the floor.

"Get back!" Jack yelled at Rose and Jackie. "Get to the Doctor," he added.

The tree began to move forward, reducing Jackie's coffee table to splinters in seconds. Mickey picked up a chair, holding it in front of him as if it would stop the tree when the coffee table hadn't. Jack admired the sentiment but had no illusions that it would work.

Rose was darting down the hallway towards the room where the Doctor still lay in his healing coma, her mother yelling after her that they had to get out. "We can't just leave him!" Jack heard Rose shout before she disappeared into her mother's bedroom.

Jack watched as the tree advanced on Mickey, reducing the chair he was holding to kindling just as easily as it had dispatched the coffee table. Knowing there was nothing in the room that could help them, Jack decided that in this case retreat was the better part of valor.

"Fall back, Mickey!" he shouted, even as Jackie screamed behind him for them to get out. They ran back towards Jackie's bedroom. Jack and Mickey ran straight into the room, but Jackie lingered in the doorway.

"Just leave him!" she yelled.

"Get in here!" Mickey shouted back, as both Rose and Jack leveled incredulous stares at Jackie.

A layer of visible frustration icing over her panic, Jackie stepped all the way into the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Mickey, who was attempting to push her wardrobe in front of the door, motioned for her to come help him, and she did so.

Meanwhile, Jack had picked up the sonic screwdriver and was fiddling with it, running through all the settings he'd managed to memorize in his relatively short time with the Doctor. It was woefully short, however, and he couldn't think of any that would help against a murderous spinning Christmas tree.

"Any ideas for a killer Christmas tree setting, Rose?" he shouted over the din of "Jingle Bells."

Rose shook her head. She leaned over the Doctor and shouted into his ear. "Doctor, wake up!" He didn't react and Rose looked helplessly at Jack.

The wardrobe began to shake violently as the tree began to grind its way through. "I'm gonna get killed by a Christmas tree," Jackie screamed, her voice rising into a squeak at the end of the sentence. She and Mickey scrambled back to the other side of the room and cowered in the corner.

Suddenly, Rose's face lit up. "Jack, give me the sonic!"

Jack tossed it to her without question and then squared his shoulders facing the door, placing himself between the tree and his friends. He glanced over his shoulder to see what Rose was doing, noting that she had placed the sonic in the Doctor's hand.

The tree burst through the doors. "Jack, get back!" Rose yelled. He backed up a little but kept himself in front of everyone else. Another glance over his shoulder revealed Rose leaning in close to the Doctor's ear, murmuring something to him that Jack couldn't hear.

She had no sooner pulled back from him than he shot upright, pointing the sonic at the spinning tree. Wordlessly, he soniced the tree, causing it to explode just a foot or so away from Jack. Jack and Rose stared at the Doctor breathlessly.

"Remote control," he said blandly, as if he hadn't just been summoned out of a coma to save Rose from a Christmas tree. "But who's controlling it?" he continued, leaping out of bed. He spotted a dressing gown hanging on a hook and grabbed it, stepping nimbly over the remains of the tree.

Bemused, Jack and the rest of them trailed after the Doctor as he made his way out of the flat and onto the balcony. They looked down into the square below and saw three of the masked Santas looking up at them.

"That's them!" Mickey exclaimed. "What are they?"

Rose shushed him, focused on the Doctor. He raised the sonic, arm steady, and pointed it down at the Santas. They backed away, getting closer together before teleporting away. The Doctor still said nothing.

Mickey, naturally, filled the void. "They've just gone!" he exclaimed. "What kind of rubbish were they? I mean, no offense," he continued cockily. "But they're not much cop if a sonic screwdriver's gonna scare 'em off."

"Pilot fish," the Doctor said flatly.

"What?" Rose asked as four pairs of eyes focused sharply on the Doctor.

"They were just pilot fish." Whatever else he might have said was lost as he groaned, clutched his stomach, and collapsed back against the wall. They knelt around him, Rose taking one of his hands and Jack laying a hand on his shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked worriedly.

"You woke me up too soon," he ground out, breathing heavily. "I'm still regenerating. I'm bursting with energy." Yet another tendril of golden light burst forth from his mouth. "See? The pilot fish could smell it," he explained. "A million miles away. So they eliminate the defense - that's you - and they carry me off." He broke off to cough.

Jack glanced up at the sky above them, deceptively empty-looking. "They could run their batteries on you for a couple of years," he said, concerned.

The Doctor nodded slightly before groaning and doubling over in pain. While Jackie panicked behind Rose, the Doctor grit his teeth. "My head," he ground out. Jackie pushed forward, holding the Doctor up. "I'm having a neural implosion," he said, focusing on her.

"What do you need?" Jackie asked frantically.

"I need…" the Doctor said.

"Say it, tell me, tell me…" Jackie encouraged.

"I need…"

"Painkillers?" Jackie suggested.

"I need…"

"Do you need aspirin?"

"I…"

"Codeine? Paracetamol? Oh, I dunno, Pepto-Bismol?"

"I need…"

"Liquid paraffin? Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E?" Jackie continued, her voice rising hysterically. Jack wasn't sure if he should keep watching in amusement or stop her babbling so they could actually help the Doctor.

"I need…" the Doctor began yet again.

"Is it food?" Jackie said, switching categories. "Something simple," she decided. "Uh, a bowl of soup? A nice bowl of soup? Soup and a sandwich? Soup and a little ham sandwich?" she finished, sounding slightly crazed.

"I _need_ you to shut up!" the Doctor finally managed, and Jack smothered a chuckle.

For her part, Jackie pulled back and looked annoyed. "Well, he hasn't changed that much, has he?" she muttered.

The Doctor lurched forward with a groan, leaning heavily on the balcony railing. "We haven't got much time," he said. "If there's pilot fish, then-" He broke off, reached into the pocket of his dressing gown. He pulled an apple out and looked at it, a bemused expression on his face. "Why's there an apple in the pocket of my dressing gown?" he asked, looking round at the rest of them.

"Oh, that's Howard," Jackie said, her tone apologetic. "Sorry."

"He keeps apples in his dressing gown?" the Doctor asked, confused.

"He gets hungry," Jackie explained sheepishly.

The Doctor glanced between the apple and Jackie, completely flummoxed. "What, he gets hungry in his sleep?"

Jackie shrugged. "Sometimes."

The Doctor looked like he might pursue the issue of the apple and the dressing gown, but then he doubled over in pain once again. He backed up against the wall again and sank to the ground, grimacing. Rose knelt in front of him and Jack hunkered down next to them.

"Brain… collapsing…" the Doctor grit out. He reached out and grabbed Rose's arms. He held them tightly and focused on her face. With enormous and obvious effort, he continued to speak to her. "The pilot fish… the pilot fish mean… that something… something…" He took a deep breath. "Something's coming," he finished. Without another word, he slumped down into Rose's lap.

"Doctor?" she said, apprehensive. "Doctor?"

Jack shook his head. "He's gone back into a coma again." Jack reached out and laid one of his hands over Rose's. "There's nothing we can do for him now but keep watch and protect him when whatever's coming gets here."

Rose looked distressed. "And how are we gonna do that, Jack?"

Jack said nothing, setting his jaw. He got to his feet and peered down into the courtyard, verifying that all of the Santas were still gone. Satisfied that, at least for the time being, they were safe, he looked at Mickey and Jackie. "Get inside and start reinforcing the windows. Use anything you can think of." They nodded and disappeared into the flat.

Jack knelt back down next to Rose and the Doctor. "Hey," he said, gently taking Rose's chin in his hand. "We'll get through this."

"Yeah," Rose said, sounding unconvinced.

"We've got through worse. We got through the Game Station, didn't we?"

Rose looked down at the Doctor and his new face. "Mostly," she said quietly.

"It's going to be all right, Rose. We'll make it all right." He leaned forward to press a kiss to Rose's forehead and then shifted so that he was crouching on his feet instead of kneeling. "Let's get him back inside, and then we'll figure something out."

Rose nodded. "All right." She helped shift the Doctor into Jack's arms and helped support the Doctor's weight as she and Jack got to their feet.

With Rose holding the door out of the way, Jack maneuvered the Doctor's unconscious body through the doorway and down the hall to Jackie's bedroom. Rose darted in behind him, brushed past him and pulled back the covers so that Jack could set the Doctor down. Jack adjusted the Doctor into what he hoped was a comfortable position. Wordlessly, Rose held out the end of the covers. Jack took it and arranged the covers over the Doctor, tucking him in like a child. Rose clambered onto the bed and knelt down next to the Doctor.

"He's sweating," she said. "He wasn't doing that before. Jack, he's getting worse, not better."

Jack grimaced. "Let me get you a cloth for his forehead," he said.

"Thanks," Rose said distractedly.

Jack sighed. "I'll be right back," he murmured.

He made his way to the living room, which in its post-Christmas tree attack state looked as though a hurricane had passed through. Jackie was in the middle of stacking shelving units in front of the windows.

"Jackie," he began, "do you have a handkerchief or a washcloth? The Doctor's getting clammy."

Jackie nodded. "Of course," she replied. "Follow me." She led him to a small closet filled with various items, including linens. She rummaged around until she produced a small square of soft flannel. "This should do, I think."

Jack reached out to take it, smiling gratefully. "Yes, I think it will." He tried to take it from her, but she kept a hard grip on the other corner. "Of course, it will work better if you give it to me," he said, bemused.

"I've slapped the Doctor, you know," Jackie said conversationally.

"I believe I've heard that story, yes," Jack said cautiously.

"I don't know you, Captain Jack. I don't know what you mean to my daughter or what she means to you, or how you fit in with her and the Doctor. But so help me God, if you hurt my daughter, you'll answer to me."

Jack's expression turned serious. "Jackie Tyler, your daughter is the most exceptional human being I have ever had the pleasure or the honor of knowing. I'd die before hurting her or before letting someone else hurt her. I promise you that."

Jackie held his gaze steadily for a moment, and Jack felt like he was being measured. He found himself straightening his posture slightly, oddly intimidated. _Her bark is worse than her bite_, Rose had told him a few hours earlier. Jack was beginning to think it might be the other way 'round.

"You'd best keep that promise," Jackie finally said, releasing the flannel cloth.

Jack resisted the urge to salute, certain that under these circumstances it would come off as insolent rather than as an actual assent to Jackie's decree. Jackie Tyler, he decided, was a formidable and, in her own way, extraordinary woman.

Then again, he thought as he approached the doorway to the room where the Doctor lay and caught sight of Rose, still kneeling next to him, now clutching one of his hands and watching his face carefully, it would take a formidable and extraordinary woman to raise someone as wonderful as Rose Tyler. He walked fully into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Here," he said quietly, handing the piece of flannel to Rose over the Doctor's prone form.

"Thanks," she replied, taking the cloth and wiping the Doctor's brow. "What if he doesn't wake up?" she asked in a small voice.

"He will," Jack said, trying to inject as much certainty into his voice as he possibly could.

"But what if he doesn't, Jack? What will we do?"

Jack shook his head slowly. "Take him back to the TARDIS, I guess. She'd know what to do."

"But neither of us can talk to her the way the Doctor can," Rose said helplessly. "How could we even-"

Jack reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Rose's ear before cupping her cheek. "He'll wake up, honey."

* * *

Rose leaned into Jack's touch, relishing the warmth of his hand against her cheek. It was crazy, considering the situation they were currently in and the fact that she still wasn't quite one hundred percent convinced that this skinny, sweating bloke really, _really_ was the Doctor, but sitting there with the Doctor's hand in hers and Jack's hand on her cheek, Rose Tyler felt _safe_. Sure, their situation felt pretty dire at the moment and the Doctor was, for lack of a better description, out of commission, but he was here and Jack was here, and they weren't hundreds of thousands of years in the future fighting a hopeless battle without her, and that at least was an improvement over the last time she'd stumbled out of the TARDIS and onto the Powell Estate.

A slight movement outside the door caught her eye, and she looked over to find Mickey standing in the doorway holding his laptop. The slight smile that had appeared on her face dropped, and though Mickey didn't say anything Rose felt like something important had happened between them. He nodded slightly and then resolutely continued past the door.

Rose shook herself a little and turned her attention back to Jack and the Doctor. "We should probably check his vitals again," she said, itching to do _something_, even if it wasn't particularly helpful. Jack reached behind himself and plucked the medical student's stethoscope from the bedside table.

"Here," he said. "You can do it."

Rose was fairly certain Jack knew the only reason she wanted to check over the Doctor again like this was to feel like she was doing something. He was exceptionally good at reading her, in some ways better even than the Doctor.

She put the stethoscope into her ears and laid the other end on the Doctor's chest. With a small gasp of dismay, she pulled back.

"What's wrong?" Jack asked, tone sharpening.

"Only one of them's working," Rose said numbly.

Jack sighed heavily, then got to his feet and ruffled Rose's hair gently. "He'll get better," he said. "He has to." He gestured out towards the living room. "Come on, let's leave him be for a while. He needs time to heal."

Rose looked back at the Doctor's restless form and nearly told Jack she'd rather stay with the Doctor, but she decided that Jack had a point. If healing comas were normal for Time Lords like Jack said they were, then whatever was happening with his hearts right now was probably normal too, or so she could tell herself. Finally, she nodded and shifted until she could swing her legs over the edge of the bed and get to her feet. "All right, Jack," she said. "But we'll have to come check out him soon."

Jack nodded and slipped his arm around Rose's shoulders as she came around the bed. Together, they made their way to the living room. The windows were now blocked, and although it was nothing that would stand in the way of another murderous Christmas tree or any truly determined alien attacker, it still made Rose feel at least a little safer. Sometimes an extra few seconds was all you needed to make a clean getaway - if nothing else, her time with the Doctor had taught her that.

Jackie had turned on the telly, and it was tuned to the BBC, whose reporters appeared to be discussing the same space probe project she'd seen being talked about earlier by Harriet Jones. Mickey was sitting on the couch, which had been cleared of debris. His laptop was sitting on his lap, and Rose saw that he'd connected it in to the phone line so he could use the internet. Jackie sat in her favorite chair, a cup of tea in her hand and two steaming cups of tea sitting on a makeshift table in front of her.

Rose sat down on the arm of Jackie's chair while Jack took a seat next to Mickey.

"Any change?" Jackie asked.

"He's worse," Rose admitted. "Just one heart beating. Jack says he thinks it might be normal."

Jackie shrugged. "Well I certainly don't know." She reached forward and picked up one of the extra cups of tea and handed it to Rose. "The other's for you, Captain," she said. "I didn't know how you take it, so I left it black," she added. "There's milk and sugar in the kitchen if you fancy them."

"Thank you," Jack said, reaching forward to pick up the cup and taking a sip. "Black is fine."

Hoping to take her mind off the Doctor and their current predicament, Rose turned her attention to the telly, where a reporter was preparing to throw to the live feed of a press conference.

"Scientists in charge of Britain's mission to Mars have re-established contact with the Guinevere I Space Probe. They're expecting the first transmission from the planet's surface in the next few minutes."

At the press conference, the squirrely scientist from earlier in the day, who the graphics at the bottom of the screen identified as Daniel Llewellyn, was already answering questions. "Yes, we are. We're - we're back on schedule. We've received the signal from Guinevere I. The Mars landing is an unqualified success." He seemed to be near to bursting with pride and excitement.

"But is it true that you completely lost contact with the probe earlier tonight?"

"Yes, we had a bit of a scare." Rose found herself tensing at this. They were also having a bit of scare, weren't they? "Guinevere seemed to fall off the scope," Llewellyn continued, "but it… it was just a blip. She only disappeared for a few seconds. She's fine now, absolutely fine. We… we're getting the first pictures transmitted any time now." He glanced to the side, as if seeing someone gesturing for him. "I'd better get back to it, thanks."

He hurried off the stage and the BBC cut back to their reporters. Rose looked over at Jack and could see the same vague worry that she was feeling written on his face. She would have said something, but Mickey interrupted.

"Here we go," he said, staring at his laptop. "Pilot fish."

Rose got to her feet and went to sit on Mickey's other side. She and Jack watched over Mickey's shoulders.

"Scavengers, like the Doctor said," Mickey continued as a video played on his computer. "Harmless. They're tiny, but the point is the little fish swim alongside the big fish."

"Do you mean like sharks?" Rose asked, glancing worriedly from the screen to Mickey to Jack and back to Mickey.

"Great big sharks," Mickey affirmed. "So, what the Doctor means is… we had them," he gestured to the small fish swimming along in the video. "Now we get that," he finished. As he said it, a huge shark appeared in the video, snapping its jaws violently at the viewer.

"Something is coming…" Rose murmured, chilled and wishing more than ever that the Doctor were here. Or rather, that the Doctor were conscious, she thought, reminding herself that the Doctor was - supposedly - still the Doctor and still present.

As the television feed experienced some mild static, Rose looked at Mickey. "How close?" she asked, her voice low and serious.

"There's no way of telling," Mickey said with a shrug. "But the pilot fish don't swim far from the daddy."

The static on the television resolved itself into a shaky image. As Jackie peered closer to the screen, Rose stared at it from where she sat, seeing it but not really processing it. "So it's close," she murmured.

"Funny sort of rocks," Jackie piped up.

Sharpening her focus on the image, Rose felt the vague sense of dread she'd been feeling since the Doctor had said something was coming solidify into a heavy ball in the pit of her stomach. "That's not rocks," she said dully.

The four of them were now all watching the news apprehensively. A BBC reporter spoke over the image coming in from the space probe. "Coming live from the depths of space on Christmas morning…"

Suddenly, the blurs and shakes ceased and the image was thrown into sharp clarity. The alien face was now unmistakable, and when it roared viciously Rose, Jackie, Mickey, and even Jack jumped backwards in surprise.

"I think the sharks are here," Rose said quietly.

On the news, the BBC had quickly cut back to a shot of their studio, but the anchors and staff clearly had no idea how to react or what to say in response to the video they'd just seen. There was a flurry of activity as staffers rushed through the studio behind the anchors and in front of them. The anchors' microphones picked up offstage chatter and the occasional shout or sob.

Jack got to his feet and shut the television off resolutely. "All right," he said, "we're not going to get any more worthwhile information from that for a while. Let's stay calm." He focused on Mickey. "Mickey, how are your hacking skills?"

Mickey grinned proudly. "You won't find better," he said boastfully.

Rose smiled slightly. "He likes to brag, but we tolerate it because he is actually quite good with the computers," she explained to Jack.

"Right. In that case," he said to Mickey, "get into as many government communication networks as you can. Focus on British, but if you can get into UNIT or NATO, that can't hurt."

"Aye aye, Captain," Mickey said, giving Jack a loose salute.

Rose and Jack shared a good-natured eyeroll as Mickey went into hacker mode, hunched over his laptop and typing furiously.

"Rose," Jack continued. "Stay with the Doctor. He'll probably do better with you close by anyway, and if he wakes up again, even if it's just for a minute, you can see if you can coax any advice out of him."

Rose nodded. "Will do," she said softly. "What are you gonna do?"

"I'm going to go back to the TARDIS, see if there's anything in the data banks or the library that can help us." He shrugged. "It would be easier if we knew what they were, but I don't recognize them. Still, the TARDIS might be paying attention. Maybe she'll bring something to my attention."

Rose managed a small smile. "Good luck. You've got that mobile I got you in Cardiff, yeah?"

Jack patted his pocket. "Charged and ready."

"Come back as soon as you find something," Rose instructed him firmly. "And maybe call in an hour to check in, okay?"

"I'll keep you updated. You call me if there's any change with the Doctor, or if Mickey finds out something useful."

"Of course."

Behind Jack and Rose, Jackie cleared her throat. "And what should I do?" she asked pointedly.

Rose and Jack shared a glance before Rose spoke. "Mum, you should make more tea. And maybe some soup. I think it's going to be a long night."

Jackie gazed steadily at Rose for a moment, as if trying to decide if Rose were brushing her off or not. Finally, having either decided Rose really wanted some soup or that she'd rather be given kitchen duty than any other world-saving task she might otherwise get assigned, she nodded. "All right," she said. "We've got chicken or tomato soup in the cupboard. Any preferences?"

Rose smiled and shook her head. "Dealer's choice, Mum."

She turned to go into the kitchen and Jack and Rose headed towards the room where the Doctor lay in his healing coma. They paused at the door, and Rose stepped partially in the room before turning back to Jack.

"Be careful," she said. "We can't know for sure that all those pilot fish Santa things are gone, and who knows what those aliens on TV will do if they pick up on the energy the Doctor's giving off, or if they somehow pick up on the TARDIS…"

Jack leaned forward and pressed a lingering kiss to Rose's forehead. "I'll be fine," he said. "And if all else fails, we can hole up in the TARDIS until the Doctor's better. Once we lock those doors-"

"I know, I know," Rose said. "The assembled hoards of Genghis Khan couldn't get through 'em."

Jack chuckled. "Exactly. We'll get through this. And then you and I and the Doctor are going to visit some resort planet somewhere for some well-deserved rest and relaxation. I had a friend at the Time Agency who told me about this one resort planet, made all out of diamond."

"Sounds expensive," Rose said with a smile. "Good thing we never seem to need money."

Jack grinned. "That's the spirit. I'll talk to you soon," he added over his shoulder as he headed towards the front door of the flat.

"Bye, Jack," Rose said, trying to keep from sounding worried or sad.

With measured steps she made her way to the Doctor's bedside. He was still restless and sweaty. She picked up the abandoned piece of flannel and, skirting around the end of the bed, climbed back up on the other side of it until she was once again kneeling next to the Doctor.

"You said you changed your face so you wouldn't die," she said softly. "What's the point of changing your face if you go and die anyway, hmm? Tell me that, Doctor." She sighed and gently mopped his brow. "Wake up and explain yourself, Doctor." She took his hand, which she noted was less cold than it usually was, in her own. "It's Christmas," she whispered. "You can't die on _Christmas_. I'll never forgive you if you do, you daft alien."

The shades were drawn on the room's windows, so when Rose's gaze naturally went to them she was unable to look up into the sky. It wouldn't matter anyway, she told herself. Whatever was coming for them was still in space, miles and miles and miles away. She wouldn't be able to see its approach.

She felt helpless, sitting there on the bed with nothing with which to help the Doctor besides a damp square of flannel and whatever comfort he might get from the touch of her hand. She hated feeling so helpless.

Her vague memories of the hours before she woke up on the TARDIS just in time for the Doctor to explode were starting to reform and solidify. The hopelessness she was feeling in that moment had her flashing on sitting in a chip shop around the corner with her mum and Mickey. They were having an inane conversation about some new pizza place (only her mum, she thought with a wry smile, would ask what kind of food a pizza place was selling), and Rose felt suddenly overwhelmed with helplessness, to the point where she could only _make_ something happen

She could see herself slamming her hands on the table, yelling at her mum and Mickey, and running out of the shop. Try as she might, however, she couldn't remember what happened next. Or, for that matter, precisely how she'd ended up there in the first place, instead of fighting Daleks with Jack and the Doctor.

"You," she said, squeezing the Doctor's hand, "have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, mister. Don't think you can get out of it just because your regeneration or whatever isn't going smoothly. You can't get off the hook that easily."

The Doctor stirred restlessly.

"I'll tell you a secret, though," Rose added softly. "I'm probably going to forgive you."

Maybe she was imagining things because she wanted them so desperately, but Rose thought that just maybe, the Doctor settled a little in response to her words. Allowing herself a tiny hint of a smile, she wiped his brow again.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter (I've been aiming for a Sunday/Wednesday posting schedule); I spent all day Wednesday in bed with a migraine. This is even less fun than it sounds. But the wee hours of Thursday morning is _almost_ the same thing as Wednesday, right?


	5. Chapter 5

Jack made his way cautiously to the TARDIS, looking around corners before continuing on, expecting fire-throwing-trombone players dressed as Santa Claus to jump out at him from behind every tree and phone box. The courtyard area of the Powell Estate was quiet, however, aside from the occasional echo of bass from a distant Christmas Eve party.

Once again feeling naked - and not in the fun way - without a weapon at his side, Jack wondered idly if somewhere in the wilds of the never-ending TARDIS corridors there were anything resembling an armory. Certainly the Doctor wouldn't have chosen to add one, but the Doctor hadn't designed the TARDIS, he'd borrowed her.

As he reached the TARDIS, Jack pulled his key - given to him very ceremoniously by Rose after they'd dropped off Blon-the-egg on Raxacoricofallapatorious with the Doctor looking on, a faux-bored look masking a smile - out of his pocket and unlocked the door. He'd felt absurdly pleased to receive a key, absurdly happy that the Doctor was acknowledging to that extent that Jack was just as much a part of the TARDIS crew as Rose was… no, Jack corrected himself mentally, it wasn't a crew so much as it was a family. Jack had been absurdly pleased that the Doctor thought of Jack as part of the TARDIS family.

He stepped into the TARDIS and smoothly shut the door behind him, flipping the lock. He took a deep breath, and he felt a nearly-imperceptible shift in the atmosphere of the console room. It was an odd mixture of the usual welcoming feeling the TARDIS always seemed to radiate when the Doctor and his companions arrived home after an adventure and a strange sense of foreboding or _wrongness_. Jack shivered slightly, and chalked the feeling up to his own worry over the crisis at hand and whatever irregularities the TARDIS was probably picking up.

"Hello, beautiful," he said softly to the ship. It always made the Doctor sigh exasperatedly and roll his eyes when Jack flirted with the TARDIS. Jack suspected this was more his general annoyance with the regularity of Jack's flirting than it was any particular opposition to Jack being attached to the TARDIS. The truth was that Jack really did think the TARDIS was beautiful. Beautiful both from an engineering perspective - to build a living, growing, endless vehicle in which one could travel through space and time was, in Jack's opinion, pretty damn impressive - but also from a much less concrete or describable perspective. Jack couldn't have explained to someone who hadn't been on the TARDIS why she was beautiful. She simply _was_, and Jack loved living there.

It had occurred to him that the personality changes that legends held could accompany regeneration might mean that the Doctor would no longer want him on board. He couldn't imagine the Doctor ever wanting Rose to leave - which Jack rather thought was borne out by the Doctor's reaction when he thought _Rose_ might want to leave. Jack was newer, though. He told himself not to worry, but he also found himself trailing his fingers lightly along the handrail as he made is way up the ramp to the TARDIS console.

Just in case he had to leave, he wanted to remember everything perfectly.

He reached the console and pulled the monitor around until it was positioned above the set of controls Jack wanted to use.

"All right, girl," he said softly. "Let's see what you've got." He searched through databanks, using what little he knew about the approaching aliens as search parameters. It was difficult, however, because they knew so little.

Frustrated, he switched to data about the TARDIS. "Don't suppose you've got a cache of weapons hidden away? I know the Doctor wouldn't like it, but the Doctor's not awake right now."

There was a slight change in the TARDIS' usual humming noise, but Jack wasn't sure if it was an affirmative or disapproving change.

As he browsed rapidly through technical specifications about the TARDIS, Jack revisited the idea of piloting the TARDIS without the Doctor. Jack had enough background knowledge about spacecraft, even ones with time travel capabilities (albeit rudimentary ones when compared to the TARDIS), that he could recognize the purposes of different sets of controls. But he wasn't confident in his abilities to pilot the TARDIS on his own. There were a lot of controls about which Jack had no ideas regarding their purpose. And although Rose had been traveling with the Doctor longer than Jack had, she lacked his background knowledge. She was perfectly adept at following the Doctor's instructions on the not-uncommon occasions when he drafted her for assistance with a tricky landing, but that was as far as her TARDIS-piloting capabilities extended.

It seemed to Jack that hiding in the TARDIS as he'd mentioned to Rose was looking like a better and better option. In the meantime, he flipped off the monitor and adjusted a few dials.

"Time to run silent," he murmured. "Don't want anyone catching on to you being here."

In low light, Jack made his way through the TARDIS corridors to his room. He rummaged around in his stuff until he found one of his weapons that the Doctor hadn't managed to confiscate or ruin yet. It was a small blaster, and judging from the grainy picture he'd seen of whatever was coming for them, it wouldn't be much use. But Jack felt better armed than he did unarmed, no matter how the Doctor felt about weapons.

Tucking the blaster discreetly into the waistband of his pants, Jack left his room and returned to the console room. He stroked the console one last time.

"If there's anything you can do for the Doctor," he said quietly, "now would be a good time to let me know." He waited for a few moments, half expecting the console room to light up or for bells to ring, but nothing happened.

Jack sighed. "Didn't think so," he said sadly. He strode down the ramp and left the TARDIS, carefully locking the door behind him.

He returned to Rose's flat and entered without knocking. "I'm back," he called out, lest anyone think he was an intruder. He heard the bedclothes rustling in the room where the Doctor was resting, and then Rose's head poked out beyond the doorframe.

"Anything?" she asked hopefully.

Jack shook his head. "Nope. It's hard to look up an alien race when you don't know its name."

Rose's face fell, though she quickly tried to hide it.

"Any change with him?" Jack asked her.

She shook her head.

Jack was saved from coming up with a reply by Mickey's voice from the living room.

"Rose!" he called. "I'm in!"

With backward glances at the Doctor, still restless in his bed, Jack and Rose made their way down the hallway. When they both came into the room, Mickey shifted on the couch so that there was space on both sides of him. Jack sat on one side and Rose on the other.

"Take a look," he said to them both. "I've got access to the military." His screen was split into several sections, with different feeds in each. He pointed to one, which Jack recognized as some kind of radar. "They're tracking a spaceship," Mickey said. "A big one, and fast too." Even as he spoke the blip of the ship was coming closer to the center of the radar array. "And it's coming this way," Mickey finished, tone dark.

"Coming for what, though?" Rose mused. "The Doctor? Like, specifically him?"

"I don't know," Mickey said. "Maybe they're coming for all of us."

Jack stroked his chin thoughtfully. "We do have a pronounced tendency to show up in places and times where something we have to fix is coincidentally happening right as we arrive." He shrugged. "I sort of assumed it was the TARDIS nudging us along."

"Yeah," Rose said, "but the Doctor got the trip right this time. He aimed for Christmas and here we are. Christmas."

Jack nodded. "Christmas, with a side of an alien invasion for flavor."

"Well however it happened, you're here now," Mickey said. "And the invasion's happening, whether they're coming for the Doctor or not." He glanced back and forth between the two of them as an image of the aliens, this one clearer than before and containing four faces instead of one, came on the screen. "Have you seen them before? Did you find anything in the TARDIS, Jack?"

"I've never seen them," Rose said.

Jack shook his head. "Nothing on the TARDIS that could help." He tilted his head slightly at the image of the four aliens. "I do have the sudden urge to sing 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' though."

Rose giggled, stifled the laugh quickly. "It's no time to joke, Jack," she said, trying for a stern tone but only just barely managing to suppress the laugh instead.

The aliens were speaking, and it took Jack a moment to process that he couldn't understand what they were saying. Alarmed, he looked up from the laptop to find Rose looking at him, a similarly alarmed look on her face.

"I don't understand what they're saying," she said nervously. "Can you?" she asked Jack.

"Nope. Not a word." Mickey looked at the two of them quizzically.

"The TARDIS translates alien languages in our heads, all the time, no matter where we are."

"Then why isn't it working now?" Mickey asked.

"I don't know," Rose said, and Jack shook his head numbly. "Must be the Doctor," Rose continued, sounding more lost and upset than she had all night, which was saying something. "Like he's part of the circuit, and he's… broken."

Jackie bustled into the living room with three bowls of soup on a tray. She set the tray down on the table and then perched on the arm of her chair, grabbing the remote for the TV as she did so. "Eat up, you three," she said sternly. "If you're going to have to save us all, I don't want you doing it on an empty stomach. She flipped the TV on. "And I'm having this back on, too." She turned the volume up some. She gestured to the soup. "Eat it, I said."

"Yes, ma'am," Jack said, mustering a smile. "I never refuse food." He reached out to the table and picked up a bowl. He was pleasantly surprised by the taste of the soup. It wasn't gourmet by any measure, but apparently for all that Rose and the Doctor liked to joke about Jackie's cooking, she hadn't rendered canned soup inedible.

Rose and Mickey followed Jack's example, Mickey setting his laptop on the table so that he could eat without risking spilling on the computer. Satisfied that they were obeying her, Jackie got to her feet. She set the remote control back on the table. "Leave that on," she said. "I'm going to go sit with the Doctor while you eat and do your technical stuff. I can hear it in the bedroom."

Rose looked up at her, a grateful smile on her face. "Thanks, Mum," she said quietly.

Jackie nodded and, with a detour to the kitchen to pick up a cup of tea, headed for the Doctor.

On the news, one of the BBC anchors was speaking. "Speaking strictly off the record," he said solemnly, "government sources are calling this our longest night."

"Ah," Jack said conversationally. "That's cheery."

"You can always count on Auntie Beeb," Rose returned dryly.

"Oi!" Mickey exclaimed, pointing at his laptop. "Look, they must have some kind of translation software."

Jack shifted his attention from the television to the computer and sure enough, a box underneath the video was now filling with text as the alien message replayed. "People-slash-cattle." Jack paused in the middle of reading out the translation, unable to resist the urge to comment. "That's sort of an important distinction. You'd think they could make their translation software a little more sensitive." He shrugged and continued reading. "You belong to us. To the Sycorax."

"What, like in The Tempest?" Rose asked. Jack and Mickey looked at her in surprise. "What? I do read, you know." She shrugged. "A while back, the Doctor somehow got us stranded in the Vortex for weeks. I spent a lot of time in the library. The Doctor came in while I was reading The Tempest and the next thing I knew we were doing dramatic readings of his favorite scenes."

Jack laughed and Mickey shook his head. "We own you," Jack continued once he'd finished chuckling. The video of the alien message had stopped playing, but the text remained on the screen under a still from the video. "We now possess your land, your minerals, your precious stones. Well, they're not greedy at all, then."

Mickey snorted. "No, not at all."

"You will surrender or they will die. Sycorax strong, Sycorax mighty, Sycorax rock."

"Sycorax… rock?" Rose repeated dubiously. "As in… they rock?" She did a bit of a fist pump as she spoke in an attempt to indicate the nuance she was going for.

Jack shrugged. "Presumably. They didn't seem to be made out of rock or anything."

"Who's 'they'?" Mickey asked. "'They will die,'" he quoted.

Rose shivered. "I'm guessing we'll find out soon enough," she said.

"They're sending a reply," Mickey said. "Hold on, let me see if I can pick up the signal." His fingers raced across his keyboard and after a few seconds, he grinned. "Got it. They told the Sycorax that today is a day of peace on this planet and that we extend that peace to them. Hold on, there's a bit more." He hit a few more keys and the text displaying shifted. "They also said that we're armed and we don't surrender."

"Well," Jack said after taking a deep breath. "I can't say I'd have done any different but I'm gonna hazard a guess that it's not going to go over well with the Queen wannabes."

Rose took a deep breath, then shot to her feet. "I'm checking on the Doctor," she announced, and she walked quickly away down the hallway. Jack could hear the distress in her tone. He and Mickey both got to their feet and followed her.

She was standing in the doorway to her mum's bedroom, leaning against the doorjamb and taking in the sight of her mother having fallen asleep at the Doctor's bedside, her head resting on a pillow next to the Doctor's torso.

Mickey approached her carefully, putting a tentative hand on her shoulder.

"The Doctor wouldn't _do_ this," she said shakily. Jack winced internally, cursing the Doctor and himself yet again for their oversight. "The old Doctor," Rose continued. "The _proper_ Doctor. He'd wake up. He'd save us."

"You really love him, don't you?" Mickey observed softly.

Wordlessly, Rose closed her eyes and burrowed into Mickey's embrace. Mickey looked over at Jack over the top of Rose's head.

Jack felt helpless in the face of Rose's distress. He couldn't fix the Doctor, so he couldn't fix Rose. He resisted the urge to punch the wall. Clenching his jaw slightly, he turned on his heel and returned to the living room to watch the feed from the government system on Mickey's laptop.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Late again! More apologies; life has a way of getting in the way of fandom, doesn't it? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the new chapter even though you had to wait an extra day for it!

(Also, if you're having trouble picturing Nine doing dramatic Shakespeare readings, just look up some of Prospero's monologues about controlling the elements and calling up mythological gods, and you'll see why I can see it happening, lol.)


	6. Chapter 6

They spent the rest of the night taking turns catching quick naps, keeping an eye on the government feeds on Mickey's laptop, and watching over the Doctor as he slept fitfully. Rose could tell that Jack felt like he wasn't doing enough. She felt the same, even though she knew it was illogical and that they were doing everything that they could do under the circumstances. She wished she knew what to say to Jack, but since she did feel the same as he did, she found it hard to reassure him.

Around sunrise, she was pulled from yet another restless nap by an exclamation from Mickey.

"Oi!" he called from the living room. "The Sycorax are replying to the message from last night!"

Blearily, Rose pushed herself out of her bed and shuffled quickly down the hall. Jack emerged from his vigil over the Doctor and Jackie poked her head out from the kitchen.

"I guess it's time for me to make more tea, then," she called out. Without waiting for a response, she ducked back into the kitchen. Rose could hear her puttering about with the tea things.

Rose made her way over to the couch and took a seat next to Mickey. "What have we got?" she asked as Jack sat down on Mickey's other side.

"It was just a short video," he said. He typed something, and a box popped up on top of the rest of the data. The video replayed. One of the Sycorax held out its hand. A ball of blue light appeared, and then the video ended.

"That's it?" Jack asked. "That's their reply?"

"Not very talkative, are they?" Rose commented.

"Are they trying to scare us with cheap magic tricks?" Mickey mused. "They can't think too highly of us if they think a ball of light is gonna manage that."

Suddenly they heard a commotion outside. It seemed like half the estate at least had gone outside at exactly the same time. Rose closed her eyes briefly. "Something tells me things are about to get worse again," she said.

Mickey set his laptop back on the makeshift coffee table and the three of them headed towards the front door of the flat.

As they approached the door, Rose could hear one of her neighbors yelling at her husband, asking him what was wrong and repeating his name.

She opened the door and she, Jack, and Mickey all peered out around it. "Sandra?" Rose said, zeroing in on her frazzled neighbor.

"He won't listen!" Sandra exclaimed. "He's just walking, he won't stop walking!" She gestured wildly at her husband's head. "There's this sort of… light… thing!" She had hung back to speak to Rose, but as her husband continued in the same measured pace, she hurried to catch up to him. "Jason!" she called after him. "Stop it!"

"They're heading up," Rose said, watching the zombie-like movement of the people under the control of the blue light. "They're going to the roof."

"Mickey?" Jack said, voice carefully modulated.

"Captain?"

"Go check the computer. See if the government's talking about this yet. Turn on the television. I'm betting it just got interesting again." He paused, then added, "and make sure Jackie's all right."

"Got it," Mickey said, disappearing back into the flat.

"Come on, Rose," Jack said. He took her hand, and together they followed the crowd of Powell Estate residents to the roof.

"Jack," Rose began. Her voice trembled slightly, and she scowled before starting again, steadier. "Jack, do you think they're going to jump?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't know, Rose."

"The Sycorax, their message… it said _they_ will die."

Grimly, Jack nodded. "This is probably what they were talking about. But, Rose… depending on what exactly that blue light is…" He squeezed. "The human psyche is pretty strong. And besides, the Sycorax probably won't kill them right away, anyway. This is probably just proof of the severity of their threat."

"Probably," Rose repeated flatly. _Well that's a confident assessment of the situation_, she thought caustically.

They reached the roof, and found that all of the blue-light zombies had made their way to the edge and were standing in neat lines. They appeared to have no particular inclination to move, whether said movement was to jump forward or to step back. Rose took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. "So it's like you said," she murmured. "Just a threat."

Jack strode forward until they had a clear view of other roofs in the area. Each roof was lined with people standing like statues at the edges and people bunched up behind them, begging them to come down. "For now," Jack said darkly.

They stood there silently for a moment, surveying the activity around them solemnly. "We should go back down," Rose said finally. "See what Mickey's found out. Have some of Mum's tea."

"You Brits and your tea," Jack muttered as they turned around and headed back down the stairs. "I mean, I appreciate a good cuppa now and then but I swear the British think it fixes everything."

Rose glanced over her shoulder before whispering, "Not everything."

Wordlessly, Jack squeezed her hand. They made their way back into the flat.

"What's happening out there?" Mickey asked without preamble when Rose and Jack got to the living room.

"That same blue light from the Sycorax's last message, it's glowing around a bunch of people's heads," Rose explained quickly. "The ones who are affected all went up to the roof, and they're just standing at the edge. Nothing anyone says to them will make them move."

"According to this," Mickey said, gesturing at his computer, "a third of the population is affected."

"A third of the country?" Rose asked, disbelieving. "That's insane."

But Mickey shook his head. "Not just this country," he said solemnly. "A third of the population of the _world_. It's worldwide, Rose."

Numbly, Rose sank into her mother's chair. "Worldwide," she repeated quietly.

Jack laid a hand on her shoulder, and she absently reached up to lay her hand on top of his.

"What do we do?" Mickey asked, his voice sounding uncharacteristically small.

Rose shook her head. "Nothing," she said dully. "There's nothing we can do." She turned her attention to the news, which Mickey had muted while he worked on the computer. Rose picked up the remote and turned the volume back on.

The BBC were airing live pictures from all over London as well as throughout the country and the rest of the world. Countless people with pulsing blue lights around their heads, standing blank and still at the edge of any roof more than a few stories high. Some of the anchors were missing, and those that remained were repeating the same facts, over and over, seemingly unable to even speculate on the situation.

After ten minutes or so, one of the anchors announced that they'd received word that the Prime Minister was about to address the nation. "One hopes," the anchor said weakly, "that she'll have some answers for us, or some advice."

The screen changed to the familiar confines of the Prime Minister's office at Ten Downing Street, and Harriet Jones was sitting at the desk, face serious.

"Well at least _she's_ not on the roof," Mickey muttered.

"Small favors," Jack said in agreement.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Harriet Jones said from her office. "If I may take a moment during this terrible time. It's hardly the Queen's Speech," she added apologetically. "I'm afraid that's been cancelled." It looked like a thought occurred to her, and she looked off-screen to her left.

"Did we ask about the royal family?" she asked. She waited for a response, and when she got it her face fell. "Oh," she said blandly, turning to the camera again. "They're on the roof." She blinked, seemed to steel herself. "But, ladies and gentlemen, this crisis is unique. And I'm afraid to say," she added, "it might get much worse."

Jackie, who must have heard Harriet's voice from the kitchen, came in to the living room and stood behind Rose, hands resting on top of the chair back.

"I would ask you all to remain calm," Harriet continued. "But I have one request," she said, and a note of pleading entered her serious tone. "Doctor. If you're out there… we need you."

Rose stifled a gasp, and Jack's hand tightened on her shoulder. She could feel Mickey and her mum staring at her.

"I don't know what to do," Harriet said. Rose could sympathize, she thought weakly. "But if you can hear me, Doctor…"

At this, Rose pushed to her feet and turned away from the telly. Jack's hand trailed down her arm as she moved, and his fingers tangled loosely with hers when she stopped.

"If anyone knows the Doctor," Harriet said imploringly, "if anyone can find him…" Rose stiffened. "The situation has never been more desperate.

Rose pulled her hand from Jack's and, trying to ignore Harriet's voice, walked to the doorway of her mum's bedroom, gaze steady on the unconscious Doctor. She felt hot tears running down her cheeks but couldn't stop herself from crying.

"Help us," Harriet said. "Please, Doctor. Help us," she finished.

A broken sob escaped Rose, and she heard Jack behind her sharply telling Mickey to turn off the news. Rose couldn't seem to stop crying, the sobs coming in great gasps. She felt her mother take her shoulders and turned into the comforting embrace.

"He's gone," she sobbed against her mum's shirt. "The Doctor's gone. He's left me, Mum." She continued to sob, unable to catch her breath.

"It's all right," Jackie said gently, stroking Rose's back and kissing the top of her head. "I'm sorry," she added.

Suddenly, the air was filled with the sound of broken glass. Rose jumped out of Jackie's embrace and looked around in shock to find that every window she could see in the flat had shattered.

"What the hell?" Mickey said, picking up a piece of glass and examining it as if it could explain why it had broken.

Jack strode quickly to the front door of the flat and went out onto the balcony. Rose, her sobs at least temporarily subsided in the face of a new problem, trailed after him. Dimly, she registered that glass was crunching under her feet as she stepped up to stand next to Jack at the balcony railing.

As far as she could see, broken glass was everywhere. Near as Rose could tell, there wasn't a single remaining pane of glass in sight.

"Must have been a sonic wave," Jack said. "Which means…" he began, only to trail off as a huge spaceship, looking as if its structure had been ripped directly from some mountain on its planet of origin, slowly moved into view. "The ship has entered the atmosphere," Jack finished as the ship covered the sun and left the Powell Estate in shadow.

"We have to go," Rose whispered, gazing steadily at the ship.

"Say what?" Jack asked, looking down at Rose.

She tore her gaze from the rocky spaceship and looked up into Jack's eyes. "We have to get in the TARDIS. We have to go _now_."

Without waiting for a reply, Rose whirled around and jogged back into the flat.

"Mickey!" she called out. "Come help Jack carry the Doctor." She got to the living room and found her mum already picking up shards of glass and collecting them in a plastic bag. "Mum, get your stuff, and get some food. We're going."

"Where exactly are we going to?" Mickey asked. Jack stood behind him, leaning against the wall of the hallway outside the bedroom. His face was carefully blank, his arms crossed casually over his chest.

"The TARDIS," Rose said decisively. "It's the only safe place on Earth, so that's where we should be."

"What are we gonna do in there?" Jackie asked, confusion with a slight touch of hysteria in her tone.

"Hide," Rose said, matter-of-factly. She focused in on Jack, almost daring him to contradict her.

"That's all we're gonna do?" Jackie asked incredulously. "Hide?"

"Mum, look in the sky," Rose said, gesturing out the windows they hadn't reinforced after the killer Christmas tree, now glassless. "There's a great big alien invasion and I… I don't know what to do, all right? I've travelled with him, and I've seen all that stuff, but when I'm stuck at home I'm _useless_." She had another flash of memory from her brief time at home before returning to the Doctor and Jack on the Game Station, and it only fueled her frustration. "Now all we can do is run and hide, and I'm _sorry_. Now move!" She gestured at all of them, urging them to start following her orders.

Jack and Mickey went into the bedroom to sort out the Doctor, while Jackie scurried away to collect some food and clothes. Rose glanced around the living room, looking for anything they might want to take with them. Seeing nothing, she went to the kitchen, where Jackie was putting tinned food into bags.

"Listen, Mum, don't worry about clothes and stuff, the TARDIS has got a wardrobe room that's like having twelve department stores in your closet. Just put together some food and things to drink."

"Tea," Jackie said firmly. "I've got another pot of tea going, and I'm packing up the cupboards."

Rose rolled her eyes over her mum's obsession with tea in the last twenty-four hours. Jack had rather hit the nail on the head with his observation about British people and tea - at least where Jackie was concerned. Even when Rose had been a little girl, Jackie's first response to a tough situation was a good strong cup of English Breakfast. Rose couldn't even remember the number of teabags they'd gone through when Jimmy Stone had broken Rose's heart.

Leaving her mum to her packing, Rose went over to check on the boys.

"Are you sure you don't want to share the load?" Mickey was saying as Rose came into the room. "You don't have to carry him by yourself."

Jack was once again holding the Doctor in a fireman's carry. He shifted the Doctor's weight slightly and shook his head. "I'm fine," he said. "He's really not that heavy, to be honest. Skinnier than he used to be."

Rose spotted the Doctor's old clothes sitting on the dresser, neatly folded. His leather jacket was hanging off one of the knobs on the drawers. They certainly weren't necessary items for their ability to take shelter on the TARDIS, but with no idea what fate they were leaving the flat to, Rose found herself snatching up the jeans, jumper, socks, and jacket. "Where's his boots?" she asked.

"By the door," Mickey said, clearly unsure why Rose wanted them. "Do we need them?" he asked.

"Just bring them," Rose said. "And see if Mum needs help carrying the bags."

A minute later, Jackie and Mickey came out of the kitchen, both laden with shopping bags.

"We're _hiding_ in the TARDIS, not moving in!" Rose exclaimed.

"You said to bring food!" Jackie said. "I'm bringing food!"

Rose rolled her eyes, but dropped the subject. "Let's just get to the TARDIS," she said.

The four of them made their way down the stairwell, across the courtyard, and into the TARDIS. Rose resolutely shut the door behind them as Jack carefully laid the Doctor down on the grating.

"No chance you two could fly this thing?" Mickey asked, gesturing to the console.

Rose and Jack exchanged glances before Rose shook her head. "Not without the Doctor. We just don't know enough about it."

Jack nodded. "I know a little bit, and Rose is fantastic at following the Doctor's instructions, but we're more likely to create bigger problems than solve this one if we actually tried to fly it without his help."

Mickey furrowed his brow. "But Rose did it before," he said. "When you and the Doctor sent her here alone, and she wanted to go back to you and help."

"Well, yeah," Rose said, reaching back in her mind and dimly remembering Mickey in the big yellow truck, the panel covering the heart of the TARDIS finally flying open, and tendrils of golden light enveloping Rose in warmth and song. "But it's been sort of… wiped out of my head?" she tried the explanation out, unsure if it was really what she meant but deciding it was the best way to explain it. "Like it's forbidden," she said. "What I did that time, I mean."

She looked over at Jack, but he was making a big show of checking over the Doctor. He clearly knew something, but Rose sensed that he didn't want to explain without the Doctor's help unless he had to do so. She looked back at Mickey. "I think if I tried that again, the universe would rip in half or something."

Jack looked up then, and said in agreement, "Or something."

"Ah," Mickey said, "better not then."

"Yeah," Rose said. "Better not."

"So…" Mickey said. "What do we do, then? Just sit here?"

Rose threw her hands in the air, frustrated with the question. "Yes!" she said testily. "That's as good as it gets. If you get bored, go exploring. Even the Doctor doesn't know how many rooms there are!"

Jackie appeared at Rose's side with a thermos in her hand. "Right, here we go," she said soothingly. "Nice cup of tea."

"Hmm," Rose said sardonically. "The solution to _everything_."

"Now stop your moaning," Jackie said sternly. "I'll get the rest of the food."

"The… the rest?" Rose repeated as Jackie turned on her heel and headed down the ramp to the door. Rose looked down at the six shopping bags Jackie and Mickey had already brought down.

"You wouldn't tell me how much we needed," Jackie said briskly. "There's a few more bags. I'll be right back, don't worry."

With that, she slipped out the door and shut it behind her. Rose shook her head and leaned against the console. She looked down at the Doctor and Jack, who had stayed crouched at the Doctor's side throughout Rose and Jackie's exchange about the food.

"How is he?" Rose asked.

"Well," Jack said, "the good news is that the heart that wasn't working before is working now." He paused briefly before adding, "The bad news is that the one that was working isn't working anymore."

Rose let out a long stream of air. "This sucks," she said under her breath. She always tried to limit her complaints about situations with the Doctor, since he often had very little patience for them. But, well, the Doctor wasn't listening right now, was he? So she'd complain if she bloody well wanted to, she decided.

"Tea," Mickey commented, picking up the thermos and pouring himself some tea in the plastic cup that went on top of the thermos. "Like we're having a picnic while the world comes to an end," he said, tone amused. "Very British."

"That's what I was saying," Jack said, pushing to his feet. "There's nothing like a British man and his tea. During the Blitz…"

Jack started one of his stories, but Rose tuned him and Mickey out, staring pensively at the Doctor. Jack was so comfortable with him already, so confident in the idea that this new man was in fact the same man, unquestionably.

Mickey laughed at something Jack said, then gestured to the TARDIS' console screen. "How does this thing work?" he asked, getting Rose's attention. "If it picks up TV, maybe we could see what's going on out there. Maybe we've surrendered or something." He glanced between Jack and Rose. "What do you do to it?"

Rose gestured vaguely at the console. "I dunno," she said finally, "it just sort of… tunes itself? The Doctor mostly fiddles with it."

Jack shook his head. "I'll show you," he said, pointing to a set of controls. "I set her to run silent before, but hopefully just turning on the view screen and hijacking some TV feeds won't set off any alarms."

Jack wasn't particularly optimistic that turning on the monitor would somehow not call attention to the presence of the TARDIS - not when the aliens had a ship that impressive and all the technical capabilities they'd already displayed. It was, therefore, a calculated risk. But Jack figured things could only get _so_ much worse if they were discovered.

Besides, if they were discovered, it would give them something to do, and having something to do would hopefully be enough to pull Rose out of her funk.

"It's these controls here," he said, and began naming buttons and switches, pointing as he did so. "On/Off switch, channel scanner, switch to exterior camera…"

"There's an exterior camera?" Mickey said, surprised. "Where?"

Jack leveled an amused look at Mickey. "We've discussed the chameleon circuit with you, have we not?"

"Well, yeah," Mickey replied defensively. "But I thought it was broken!"

"Only so that it doesn't change anymore," Rose said. "I'm reasonably sure he could fix it if he wanted to," she added. "But I like that he doesn't."

"Me too," Jack agreed. "Now then, let's see what the good old BBC is saying." He flipped on the monitor and began fiddling, looking for news stations.

Mickey had been leaning over the console, watching what Jack was doing. He began to pull back, but lost his balance in the process and caught himself on the console. Jack resisted the urge to roll his eyes when the beeping started a moment later.

"What's that?" Mickey asked. "Is it like a distress signal?"

"Fat lot of good that's gonna do," Rose muttered. She had taken her usual seat in the captain's chair, but she was slumped there with uncharacteristic apathy. Jack frowned, but before he could say anything, Mickey piped up, ribbing her good-naturedly.

"Are you gonna be a misery all the time?"

"Yes," Rose said firmly.

"You should look at it from my point of view," Mickey said, leaving Jack to fiddle with the console on his own. "Stuck in here with your mum's cooking."

Jack glanced over his shoulder to see that Rose had managed a tiny smile at that. Then her gaze sharpened, and she looked over at the door. "Where is she?" she asked. "Shouldn't she have gotten back by now?"

Jack and Mickey both shrugged. Jack was, quite frankly, more concerned about the beeping, which had yet to stop. He reached up and yanked the screen closer to him, as he'd shifted to a different section of the console in an attempt to figure out the source of the problem.

"I'd better go and give her a hand," Rose said, getting to her feet. "It might start raining missiles out there and we can't have her running around in all that, now can we?"

"Tell her anything from a tin'll be fine," Mickey said impishly.

Rose paused at the door, hand on the knob. "Why don't you tell her yourself?"

"I'm not that brave," Mickey replied, the picture of seriousness.

Rose grinned at him. "No comment," she said. "I'll be right back," she added.

She was halfway through the door, still looking back into the TARDIS, when Jack realized what had happened.

"Shit," Jack breathed. "Rose!" he called in the direction of the closing door. "Wait!" he shouted, just as the sound of Rose screaming filtered through the crack in the door, which she hadn't quite finished closing before whatever caused her to scream happened.

Mickey, who had picked up the thermos of tea to pour himself another helping of it, dropped it in surprise. "Rose?" he called out, then glanced briefly at Jack before taking off towards the door.

Jack wasted no time deciding whether or not to follow. The Doctor had been holding steady in essentially the same condition for hours, whilst Rose was in peril. Besides, if Jack didn't go after Rose now, there would surely be hell to pay to the Doctor when he woke up and found out about it.

Jack and Mickey stumbled out of the TARDIS and Jack found that his discovery seconds before Rose had screamed had been correct - they were no longer on Earth.

They were in the Sycorax ship, surrounded on all sides by the Sycorax themselves.

"The door!" Rose yelled at them. "Close the door!"

In the nick of time, Jack scrambled backwards and slammed the TARDIS door. At least the Doctor was still safe inside his ship, Jack thought wryly. _Well_, he told himself,_ you wanted to give Rose something important to do. You've managed that._

More to the point, Jack suspected, Mickey's stumble onto the console had managed it.

Restrained with his arms behind his back by one of the Sycorax, Jack watched as Harriet Jones hurried over to Rose.

"Rose!" she said, sounding incongruously relieved to see her. Jack remembered the tale of Slitheen in Downing Street, having been regaled with the whole story after their encounter with Blon in Cardiff. He'd heard of Harriet Jones before, of course. Hers was a story that was still told in his time. Everyone knew who she was.

Rose pulled her arm free of the Sycorax who had been holding on to her and embraced Harriet.

"Rose!" Harriet said again, hugging her tightly. "I've got you. My lord. My precious thing." She pulled back slightly, still holding Rose's shoulders. "The Doctor," she said hopefully. "Is he with you?"

Her voice shaking, Rose shook her head. "No," she said. "We're on our own."

It was effectively true if not essentially true, and as such Jack was already coming up with an array of increasingly desperate plans and ideas to attempt to get them out of this mess. He scanned the cavernous room they were in. Surrounded by hoards of Sycorax, in addition to himself, Mickey, Rose, and Harriet, there was one other young man. He was a reasonably attractive man, Jack thought. He held a tablet of some kind and had a bluetooth device in his ear. Jack pegged him fairly easily as Harriet's assistant and figured he wouldn't be particularly helpful in the event of things getting even more sticky than they already were.

The Sycorax who were restraining Mickey and Jack shoved them towards the other humans, and Jack rubbed his wrists. He positioned himself directly behind Rose and tried to look menacing.

One of the Sycorax, whose extra-ornamental dress and impressive glowing staff seemed to mark him as the leader, pointed at Rose and spoke angrily.

Harriet's assistant immediately looked down at the tablet he was holding, which Jack assumed had some kind of translation software installed on it. "The yellow girl," he said, reading off the translation. "She has the clever blue box. Therefore, she speaks for your planet."

"But she can't," Harriet said protectively, worry edging her tone.

"Yeah," Rose said, voice firm and quiet. "I can."

"Don't you dare," Mickey said quickly.

"Someone's gotta be the Doctor," Rose said. "Might as well be me."

"Jack can do it!" Mickey whispered fiercely.

Rose looked at Jack sharply, eyes flashing as if daring him to contradict her. Jack grinned at her instead, confident in her abilities. "I've got your back, honey. Give 'em hell."

Rose smiled at him and turned to speak to the Sycorax leader, only for Harriet to take her by the shoulders again.

"They'll kill you," she said.

"Never stopped the Doctor," Rose said grimly. "Won't stop me."

Rose stepped forward, her steps somewhat hesitant. The confidence she'd been displaying a moment ago seemed to drain away, and Jack wished he could communicate his support to her telepathically.

"I, um…" she began tentatively. "I address the Sycorax according to… article fifteen of the Shadow Proclamation," she said, and Jack smiled. She did pay attention rather well, Rose Tyler. "I command you to leave this world," she continued, voice strengthening somewhat, "with all the authority of the…" She trailed off briefly, seemed to be grasping for words for a second. "The Slitheen Parliament of Raxacoricofallapatorius," she finally said, the name of the planet coming out in a rush, "and um, the Gelth Confederacy…"

She trailed off, glanced over her shoulder at Jack. He nodded encouragingly, although he figured there wasn't much her speech could do in the current situation. Not because of what she was saying, but because Jack was fairly certain that nothing anyone, other than perhaps the Doctor, could say to remedy the situation. If nothing else, it was buying them precious time.

"As, uh, sanctioned…" she continued, "by the Mighty Jagrafess… and… Oh!" she exclaimed, pointing to emphasize what she was saying. "The Daleks! Now, leave this planet in peace!" She said it firmly, then when there was no response repeated, somewhat tentatively, "In… peace…"

After a few seconds of silence, the assembled Sycorax all burst out laughing simultaneously. Chuckling himself, the Sycorax leader spoke to Rose once again.

Jack and the rest of the humans looked to Harriet's assistant for the translation. "You are very, very funny," he said. He paused as the Sycorax leader said something else. Blanching, he translated, "And now you are going to die."

All at once, Harriet, Mickey, and Jack all lunged toward Rose, shouting for the Sycorax to leave her alone, to not touch her. All three of them were quickly restrained by nearby Sycorax. Jack struggled ineffectually against the hold of his captor and grit his teeth in frustration.

The leader circled Rose menacingly, speaking to her steadily as Harriet's assistant translated as quickly as he could.

"Did you think you were clever with your stolen words?" the leader said through the assistant. "We are the Sycorax," the leader roared, shaking his fists in the air. "We stride the darkness."

The leader hissed at Rose, and she flinched visibly. Jack strained against his captor even more, but the Sycorax held him tightly.

"Next to us," the assistant continued to translate, "you are but a wailing child. If you are the best your planet can offer as a champion…"

"Then your world will be gutted," a loud, gravelly voice said, just before the assistant said the same thing. Jack stilled, staring hard at the Sycorax leader. He was fairly certain he'd just heard the alien's speech in English.

"… and your people enslaved," the Sycorax leader finished.

"And your people enslaved," the assistant parroted, before looking up at the Sycorax leader, face screwed up in confusion. "Hold on, that's English."

"I would never dirty my tongue with your primitive bile!" the leader proclaimed in loud, angry English.

Rose pointed at him, a hint of smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "That's English." She turned around and looked at the rest of them. "Can you hear English?"

"Yeah," Mickey said as they all nodded. "That's English."

"Definitely English," the assistant said.

"I only speak Sycoraxic!" the Sycorax leader yelled, sounding more furious than ever.

Rose spared him a single glance before locking gazes with Jack. "If I can hear English… then it's being translated." The sadness that had been behind her eyes since the Doctor had regenerated started to fade away as she processed the implications of the Sycorax language being translated in her head. "Which means it's working," she said. "Which means…"

As if they'd choreographed it, she and Jack turned their heads as one to look over at the TARDIS. Seconds later, the doors opened wide and the Doctor stood there, smiling broadly at the assembly that greeted him. He was still in the striped pajamas and blue dressing gown they'd dressed him in hours ago.

"Did you miss me?"


	7. Chapter 7

While in his healing coma, the Doctor had remained vaguely and peripherally aware of what was going on around him. He was fairly certain it had prolonged the time he spent _in_ the coma, but after Rose had woke him up in order to get him to save them from the killer Christmas tree, he hadn't wanted to go completely out of contact.

Between Jackie's rambles before falling asleep at his bedside, Jack and Rose's whispered conversations in the doorway, and the occasional shout from Mickey to alert the others to something happening on his laptop, the Doctor managed to have a vague idea of the state of affairs outside his head.

He'd known when Jack carried him to the TARDIS that things must have gotten pretty bad. He debated waking up long enough to mention the Zero Room, since going there would probably speed up his recovery. Before he could gather the strength to do so, however, Rose had gone off to look for her mum and screamed, causing Mickey and Jack to follow her.

With no one to take him to the Zero Room, the Doctor was momentarily worried he wouldn't be able to help his friends. Then the smell of hot English Breakfast tea filled his nostrils and he inhaled sharply. _Ahh, yes,_ he thought. _Perfect. Even better than the Zero Room_.

Within minutes, he woke up on his own. He righted the thermos of tea, then with a shrug, drank down what was left inside. It was mostly breathing it in that had helped, but he figured drinking it wouldn't hurt. And he had been asleep for a while. Tea always made him feel less groggy.

He stood up quickly, bounced a few times on the balls of his feet. Stretching his arms, he bounded over to the console and pulled the monitor around so he could check on what was happening outside the TARDIS doors. He could see Rose, Jack, and Mickey, along with two other humans, all with their backs to the TARDIS. They were surrounded by hundreds of… the Doctor squinted at the monitor. He guessed Sycorax, though given the size of the display he could be wrong. Probably wasn't, though.

He headed towards the doors of the TARDIS, shrugging his shoulders to loosen them up and adjusting his dressing gown until it hung just so. He glanced up at the walls of the TARDIS and stuck his hands in his pockets. "At your leisure, then," he murmured to the ship. "You know how I like to make an entrance."

A moment later, the doors in front of him opened, and he grinned widely at the group of surprised onlookers. "Did you miss me?"

He was rewarded with a delighted smile from Rose (which he figured was a good sign under the circumstances), a broad grin and a mischievous twinkle in the eye from Jack, and an angry roar from the nearest Sycorax (_oh, brilliant,_ he thought, _I was right about them being Sycorax_). He was clearly the leader; his clothing and his bearing both made it obvious. That, and the glowing whip he was about to hit the Doctor with.

Almost bored by the predictability of the big guy's reaction, the Doctor sighed inwardly and caught the crackling whip. The electric charge was easy for the Doctor to prevent from harming him. Once the end had wrapped sufficiently around his arm, the Doctor gave a sharp yank, and the whip flew away from the Sycorax leader and into the Doctor's hand.

"You could have someone's eye out with that!" he said, keeping his tone light and teasing. He dropped the whip off to the side, untangling the end from his arm with a few twists of the wrist.

With an angry roar, the Sycorax leader rushed at the Doctor, waving his staff. The Doctor coolly snatched it out of his hands and snapped it over his knee. He dropped the pieces on either side of himself and then brushed his hands together as if trying to get dirt from the staff off of his palms.

"You just can't get the staff," he said amiably. "Now, you," he said, pointing at the leader sternly and using a tone of voice generally reserved for small, misbehaving children. "Just wait," he said firmly. "I'm _busy_." The leader stared at the Doctor, bemused and bewildered (_perhaps even bewitched_, the Doctor thought, amused at himself). With one last stern finger-wag, the Doctor turned to Mickey.

"Mickey!" he said, delighted. "Hello!" He turned to Jack, shook both his hands warmly, too pleased to see him for the tug of discomfort that now accompanied the sight of him to affect the greeting. "Captain Jack, so glad you're here!"

Turning on his heel, he realized that one of the other humans there was none other Harriet Jones. Positively _tickled_ to see her, he grinned broadly. "And Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North! Blimey," he said, glancing around the cavernous room. "It's like _This Is Your Life_!"

Finally, he turned to Rose and beamed at her. "Tea!" he said in lieu of a greeting. "That's all I needed! A good cup of tea! Super-heated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for jump-starting the synapses!" Abruptly, he turned serious. He leaned in towards Rose, lowered his voice so just she and those closest to them could hear. "Now," he said, "first things first. Be honest," he added seriously. "How do I look?"

Rose blinked at him, bemused. "Umm…" she said, scanning his face. "Different," she finally settled on.

"Good different," he asked, tone still serious. "Or bad different?"

"Just… different," Rose said, either unwilling or unable to elaborate.

Deciding more specific questions were in order, the Doctor leaned slightly closer and, face now deadly serious, asked, "Am I ginger?"

Rose looked up at the Doctor's hair and shrugged. "No, you're just sort of… brown," she said.

The Doctor grimaced and turned away, annoyed at himself. He really was rubbish at this regeneration business after all. "Aww," he said, kicking the dirt. "I wanted to be _ginger_, I've never _been_ ginger!" A thought occurred to him then, and he whirled back around, pointing an accusatory finger at Rose.

"And you, Rose Tyler, fat lot of good you were! You gave up on me! Oh," he said, remembering that in addition to saying he'd left her, she'd also cried a fair amount and had the sense of mind to relocate them all to the TARDIS, "that's rude! Is that the sort of man I am now, rude?" He shook his head slightly, mildly disappointed in himself. "Rude and not ginger?"

"I'm sorry," Harriet Jones said, interrupting the Doctor's stream of consciousness monologue. "Who is this?" She directed her question at Rose, glancing back and forth between her and the Doctor.

"I'm the Doctor," he said, ever-so-slightly put out. He'd come out of the TARDIS, hadn't he? Asking if they'd missed him! Was no one following the plot?

"He's the Doctor," Rose said, and the Doctor grinned because Rose had said it.

"Definitely the Doctor," Jack agreed, giving the Doctor a quick wink.

"But what happened to _my_ Doctor?" Harriet asked. "Or is it a title that's just passed on?"

The Doctor strolled over towards her, keeping casual. "I'm him," he said simply. "I'm literally him. Same man, new face. Well," he said, glancing at Jack and winking back at him, "new everything."

Harriet's brow furrowed in confusion. "But you can't be," she said.

"Harriet Jones," the Doctor said, focusing in on her. "We were trapped in Downing Street, and the one thing that scared you wasn't the aliens, wasn't the war… it was the thought of your mother being on her own."

"Oh my God," she murmured, accepting the truth.

"Did you win the election?" he asked, bending closer to her and smiling because he knew the answer. Of course he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it and watch her face when she did.

"Landslide majority," she said with a pleased and proud smile on her face.

"If I might interrupt," the Sycorax leader said, his voice gruff and sardonic.

The Doctor spun around, and he realized he'd almost forgotten the Sycorax whilst he'd been catching up with his friends and finding out that once again he'd failed to make himself ginger. (It had occurred to and been suggested to him on more than one occasion that it was possible to artificially color one's hair, but he felt like that was cheating. Next time he'd make more of an effort to concentrate on being ginger when he regenerated. This time, he'd been rather focused on hoping Rose wasn't going to reject him after the process was over.)

"Yes, sorry!" he said, addressing the Sycorax leader. "Hello, big fella!" He watched the Sycorax intently, waiting expectantly for him to speak again.

"Who exactly are you?" he asked coldly.

"Well," the Doctor said, fixing a small grin on his face. "That _is_ the question, isn't it?" he said.

"I demand to know who you are!" the Sycorax leader roared angrily.

"I don't know!" the Doctor roared back, imitating the leader's voice. _Well_, he thought as the roar tickled his throat annoyingly, _not doing that again soon_. He relaxed and spoke conversationally.

"See, there's the thing," he said. "I'm the Doctor, but beyond that, I…" he paused momentarily, searching for the words. "I just don't know," he said, shrugging. "I literally do not know who I am. It's all untested!" This he said with some degree of excitement. It was nice, he thought at the back of his mind, to be excited about regeneration again. The last time… he'd felt like he might never like himself ever again, if he were being honest. He didn't feel that way this time, and it was lovely.

He began to stroll around, smiling at everyone as he passed them. "Am I funny? Am I sarcastic?" He stopped briefly in front of Jack. "Sexy?" he said, grinning. He glanced over at Rose and winked cheekily, and was rewarded with a hint of a blush and a shy smile.

"Right old misery?" he continued, resuming his measured steps around the small crowd of people in front of the TARDIS. "Life and soul? Right-handed, left-handed? A gambler, a fighter, a coward? A traitor, a liar, a nervous wreck?" He smiled self-deprecatingly. "I mean, judging by the evidence, I've certainly got a gob." Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Rose and Jack exchanging amused smiles.

Then he noticed a big red button, and his eyes grew round as saucers in delight. He immediately shifted the direction of his steps so that he was heading towards the button. "Oh, and how am I gonna react when I see _this_?" He pointed over at the button. "A great big threatening button," he said, relishing every syllable. "A Great Big Threatening Button Which Must Not Be Pressed Under Any Circumstances," he elaborated, enunciating with exaggerated clarity to ensure that the fact that each word was capitalized would be clear. "Am I right?" he asked, bounding up to where the button was installed.

"Let me guess," he said, poking around at the device to which the button was connected. "It's some sort of control matrix? Hmm?" Spotting a small door, he concluded it was the source of the control. "Hold on," he said, opening the door. "What's feeding it?" He knelt down and peered into the small cavity.

"What have we got here?" he said, spotting a red liquid. "Blood?" he added, before sticking his finger into the cavity, and dipping it in the viscous liquid. He licked the substance off and grimaced a little. "Yeah, definitely," he said, rubbing his tongue along the roof of his mouth in an attempt to get rid of the taste. "Blood. Human blood, A-positive if I'm not mistaken. Which I'm not." He wiggled his fingers and then wiped the last of the blood on his dressing gown. "With just a dash of iron."

He wished he had a banana to eat to get rid of the last of the blood taste from his mouth. "So, ah, that means…" he muttered, still distracted by the taste and the idea of having a banana. Bananas were good. "Blood control," he said, getting his own attention by doing so. "Blood control!" he exclaimed, suddenly delighted, the taste of the blood forgotten. "Oh, I haven't seen blood control in _years_! You're controlling all the A-positives."

It was a little harder to read Sycorax facial expressions than it was to read human ones - there were a lot of ever-so-slightly-different ways the Sycorax could frown, after all. But the Doctor was reasonably certain the Sycorax leader was just a little bit crestfallen that the Doctor had figured out the blood control thing. The Doctor grinned fiercely.

"Which leaves us," he continued, "with a great big stinking problem." Again, he over-enunciated each word. He could tell this was going to be another regeneration that enjoyed the feel of words in his mouth and tripping off his tongue. He liked those regenerations. "'Cos I really don't know who I am yet," he said. "I don't know when to stop."

He glanced around, noticed Jack obviously bracing for hell to break loose, having already figured out what the Doctor was going to do. He was a quick one, the captain was. "So," the Doctor continued, "if I see a Great Big Threatening Button Which Must Never Ever _Ever_ Be Pressed…" He grinned maniacally. "Then I just wanna do _this_," he finished, slamming his hand down on the button as he said the last word.

Rose and Harriet both stepped forward and shouted "no!" whilst Mickey grimaced and Harriet's assistant just stared at the Doctor in open-mouthed shock. Jack, for his part, seemed to actually relax once it became clear that the Sycorax weren't going to shoot the Doctor for pressing the button.

"You killed them!" Harriet's assistant finally choked out.

"What do you think, big fella?" the Doctor asked the Sycorax leader. He meandered down to where the others stood in varying degrees of shock. "Are they dead?"

The Doctor could practically hear the Sycorax leader grinding his teeth. "We allow them to live," he finally said, his jaw clenched.

"_Allow_?" the Doctor repeated, entirely amused. "Allow! You've no choice!" He began to pace theatrically. "I mean, after all, that's all that blood control is, a cheap bit of voodoo." He shrugged. "Scares the pants off you, but that's as far as it goes. It's like hypnosis," he said, stopping by an outcropping of rock that was the perfect height for him to lean on casually. "You can hypnotize someone to walk like a chicken or sing like Elvis, but you can't hypnotize them to _death_." He smiled. "Survival instinct's too strong."

"Blood control was just one form of conquest," the Sycorax leader blustered. "I can summon the armada and take this world by force."

"Well," the Doctor said, nodding. "You could, yeah. You could do that, of course. But _why?_" he asked. "Look at these people." He gestured around the area at the assembled humans. "These beautiful human beings," he added. "Think about their potential. From the day they arrive on the planet, and blinking, step into the sun… there is more to be seen than can ever be seen. More to do than…" He cut himself off, the words sounding too familiar as they tumbled past his lips. "No, hold on," he said, trying to place what he was quoting. "Sorry," he said finally, remembering, "that's _The Lion King_. But the point still stands," he added, somewhat indignantly even though no one had challenged him. "Leave them alone!" he finished, half shouting.

"Or what?" the Sycorax leader asked, voice shrewd.

"Or…" the Doctor said, thinking quickly. He bounded over to one of the Sycorax standing next to Rose and in one smooth motion, pulled a sword from the scabbard at the Sycorax's waist and brandished it at the leader. "I challenge you!"

The Sycorax leader, along with what seemed like every other Sycorax in the cavernous chamber, laughed heartily.

"Ah," the Doctor said mildly. "I see that struck a chord." He raised his voice to be heard over the dying chuckles. "Am I right that the sanctified rules of combat still apply?" They certainly had the last time he'd run into Sycorax, and it had helped him get out of a tight spot then just as he hoped it would now.

The Sycorax leader unsheathed his own sword and stepped menacingly towards the Doctor. "You stand as this world's champion?"

The Doctor was partially occupied with shrugging out of his dressing gown, but he spared a quick smile for the leader. "Thanks," he said conversationally. "I"ve no idea who I am, but you've just summed me up quite nicely." He'd managed to get out of the dressing gown, so he tossed it in Rose's general direction. He saw her catch it out of the corner of his eye as he focused in on the Sycorax leader. "So," he asked brightly. "Do you accept my challenge?" He narrowed his eyes and went in for the metaphorical kill. "Or are you just a _cranak pel casakree salvak?_" It was a _very_ rude name in Sycoraxic, and the Doctor was frankly glad the TARDIS refused to translate that kind of language because he was pretty sure he didn't want Rose or Jack to have that one in their arsenals when they inevitably got furious with him for refusing to pick up milk or insisting on preventing them from helping him if he were in trouble.

Predictably, the Sycorax leader roared in anger and then hissed menacingly at the Doctor before kneeling behind his sword.

"For the planet?" he asked tightly.

The Doctor imitated his adversary's posture. "For the planet," he affirmed.


	8. Chapter 8

Rose watched, slightly horrified, as the Doctor began to fight the Sycorax leader. With a sword, for Christ's sake. She didn't even know if the Doctor knew _how_ to fight with a sword. She glanced at Jack, but he looked like he was enjoying watching the fight. _Men_, she thought.

For a moment, the Sycorax leader seemed to have the upper hand as the Doctor staggered backwards. Just as he straightened up, the Sycorax swung his sword around in a wide arc.

"Look out!" she shouted.

The Doctor ducked, and then looked over at her. "Oh yeah, that helped!" he exclaimed. "Wouldn't have thought of that otherwise, thanks!"

Rose was slightly taken aback. Rude _and_ he hadn't lost of all of his previous face's sarcasm, apparently. The Doctor and the Sycorax re-engaged in their swordfight, their footwork carrying them up a staircase which, judging from the light that was streaming in from the top, led to the exterior of the ship.

"Bit of fresh air?" the Doctor said brightly. With that, he turned on his heel and raced up the stairs ahead of his opponent, who followed with swiftness that was unexpected given his size.

Rose waited for about half a second, and then with a shrug she jogged after them. The others followed after her, only a few of the Sycorax who had been guarding them coming along. Apparently they were less curious than humans.

They emerged from the staircase onto a platform. London stretched out underneath them, and Rose glanced at the edge of the platform. _Of course there isn't a railing_, she thought to herself. _Why would there be a railing?_ She sighed and continued to watch the Doctor fight. The Sycorax leader caught the Doctor in the face with the pommel of his sword, or else his fist, Rose wasn't sure. Instinctively, she jogged a few steps towards the Doctor, wanting to help him.

"Stay back!" he cried out, holding up his free hand. "If you don't, you'll invalidate the challenge, and he'd win the planet!"

Rose skidded to a halt as the Doctor swiped the back of his free hand over his face. She felt a warm hand at the small of her back and looked over her shoulder to see that Jack had come to stand behind her. "Can't we do anything?" she whispered.

"Just let him do his thing," Jack replied. "If he says we can't interfere, then we don't interfere and start thinking about what to do once we can."

Rose nodded. "Any ideas?"

"Fresh out," Jack admitted. "I'm really hoping he wins this swordfight."

Rose shook her head. "Swordfights. In pajamas."

"Whatever works," Jack muttered. "Uh-oh," he said as the Sycorax leader maneuvered the Doctor towards the edge of the platform.

The Doctor lost his footing and stumbled, falling onto his back with his head and shoulders hanging over the edge. Without pausing, the Sycorax leader sliced down with his sword, and Rose watched in horror as the Doctor's sword hand, along with the sword it was holding, fell to the earth after being severed from his wrist.

The Doctor stared at the space where his hand used to be and then looked up at the Sycorax. "You cut my hand off," he said, and Rose wondered why the Doctor sounded annoyed rather than upset.

The Sycorax leader had thrust his arms in the air and was shouting triumphantly, but Rose was focused on the Doctor, who was getting to his feet. He didn't appear to be in pain at all.

"Well, now I know what sort of man I am," the Doctor said, getting the Sycorax's attention more from the dark, even tone than the volume of the words. "I'm lucky," he added with a quick smirk. "'Cos, quite by chance, I'm still within the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle."

At this, Jack's hand, which had tightened on Rose's waist, relaxed. "Lucky," he muttered. "Ridiculous man."

"Which means," the Doctor was saying, "that I've got just enough residual cellular energy to do this."

He held up the stump of his wrist for all to see. Rose gasped when she realized that his hand was _growing back_. Right down to the nails on the tips of his long, tapered fingers, which he wiggled for extra emphasis.

"Witchcraft," the Sycorax leader said, shocked into stillness.

"Time Lord," the Doctor corrected with a small smile.

Thinking quickly and taking a page from the Doctor's book, Rose reached out to the nearest armed Sycorax and grabbed his sword. "Doctor!" she shouted.

He looked up at the sound of his name, and she tossed him the sword. He caught it smoothly and spun it around before assuming the ready position again. "Oh," he called out cheerily, "so I'm still the Doctor, then?"

Rose grinned widely. "No arguments from me!" she yelled, although she was still going to sit him - and Jack, for that matter - down in the library and refuse to let them leave until they'd explained everything to her. That being said, now that she'd seen him in action, she no longer found it difficult to believe or accept that this was still the Doctor she knew and loved.

With a smile, the Doctor looked back at the Sycorax leader. "Wanna know the best bit?" he asked, mischief that was almost childlike coloring his tone. "This new hand?" He wiggled his fingers for emphasis before re-gripping his sword. "It's a fightin' hand!" he finished, in an exaggeratedly terrible American spaghetti Western accent that made Rose giggle and Jack stifle a groan.

He charged the Sycorax leader, and after a few clashes of steel, the Doctor managed to catch the Sycorax in the solar plexus with the butt of his sword. He groaned and clutched at his stomach, giving the Doctor room to hit him a couple more times with his sword's non-pointy end. Finally the Sycorax leader fell to the ground, ending up lying on his back looking up at the Doctor, loathing clear on his face even to Rose, who had no experience reading the faces of Sycorax.

"I win," the Doctor said, voice low and fierce.

"Then kill me," the Sycorax ground out.

A muscle ticked in the Doctor's jaw. "I'll spare your life," he said, "if you take this champion's command: leave this planet, and never return. What do you say?"

After a moment's hesitation, the Sycorax leader let out a gruff, "Yes."

The Doctor pushed the blade closer to the Sycorax's neck, so that the tip of the sword was pressed against his throat without breaking the skin. "Swear on the blood of your species!" the Doctor said angrily, his voice tight.

"I swear," the Sycorax leader said.

As if someone had flipped a switch, the Doctor immediately brightened, pulled back the sword, and looked for all the world as if he were having a picnic as opposed to engaging in a swordfight. "Well there we are then," he said, grinning. "Thanks for that. Cheers, big fella!" With that, he thrust the tip of his sword into the ground and left it there, wiggling a little.

He strolled towards his waiting friends, grinning broadly.

"Bravo!" said Harriet, clapping.

A slight skip in her step, Rose hurried to meet the Doctor. "That says it all," she said happily. "Bravo!"

Jack was right beside her. "I do love a man who knows how to handle his sword," he said, reaching out and shaking the Doctor's hand in both of his own. "It certainly appears that you do," he added, winking.

"Not bad for a man in his jim-jams," the Doctor agreed after sparing a good-natured eye-roll for Jack's characteristic innuendo. "Very Arthur Dent."

Rose helped the Doctor put his dressing gown back on, and he stuck his hands into his pockets. "Now there was a nice man," he started to say. "Hold on," he said, interrupting himself, "what have I got here?"

Amused, Rose watched him pull a satsuma out of his pocket. She giggled at the brief look of confusion on the Doctor's face.

"A satsuma," the Doctor continued. "Ah, that friend of your mother's," he said, face clearing as he remembered the apple from earlier. "I guess he really does like his snacks, doesn't he?" He circled Rose and Jack as he spoke, and Rose spun in place so she was facing him as he did so, enchanted by how animated his face was as he talked, at how there seemed to be less sadness in his eyes than there had been the day before.

"Doesn't that just sum up Christmas?" he was saying, tossing the satsuma up and down. He stopped circling Rose and Jack and began to head towards the staircase back down into the ship, where the TARDIS was waiting. "You go through all those presents and right at the end, tucked away at the bottom, there's always one stupid old satsuma. Who wants a satsuma?" he asked indignantly.

Suddenly, from behind them, Rose heard a roar. She stopped in her tracks and whirled around to see what was happening. It was the Sycorax leader, back on his feet and clearly ready to charge at them and kill them all. Rose looked back over at the Doctor, but he hadn't even stopped walking. She was about to call out to him when with a swift, economical movement, he threw the satsuma at a button on the side of the door to the staircase. It caused a section of the platform where the Sycorax leader was standing to retract. In the blink of an eye, the Sycorax leader was plummeting to the ground, yelling as he went.

"No second chances," the Doctor said coldly. "I'm that sort of man."

Rose jogged to catch up with him and saw that his earlier bouncy happiness had left his face without a trace. His face was cold and angry, and the blankness in it definitely reminded her of his previous self. Rose wondered if the Doctor was always a no second chances sort of man, or if that was something that came after the Time War and his being forced to destroy his own people and his own planet. Rose shivered at the thought. They'd made their way back into the ship and had stopped, gathered in a small group in front of the TARDIS. Rose slipped her hand into Jack's.

"Told you everything would work out," he whispered, leaning down to speak into her ear.

"I never doubted you for a minute," Rose whispered back with a small smile.

"Liar, liar, pants on fire," Jack said, his whisper going sing-song.

"Shh," Rose scolded. "The Doctor's about to say something."

Jack grinned rakishly and squeezed her hand, but he didn't say anything.

The Doctor, for his part, was looking out over the vast assembly of Sycorax. Raising his voice so he would be heard throughout the huge chamber, he spoke authoritatively. "By the ancient rites of combat, I forbid you to scavenge here for the rest of time. And when you go back to the stars and tell others of this planet… when you tell them of its riches, its people, its potential… When you talk of the Earth, then make sure that you tell them this." He paused for effect and then, enunciating each word for full potency, said, "It… is… _defended_."

There was no audible response from the Sycorax, but when Rose suddenly found herself standing hand-in-hand with Jack not on the Sycorax ship, but in a courtyard a few streets away from the Powell Estate, she figured that was their way of saying that they agreed to the Doctor's terms.

"Where are we?" Jack asked, looking around curiously.

"We're just off Bloxom Road," Mickey said excitedly. "We're just round the corner, we did it!" He began to jump up and down in celebration.

The Doctor held up his hand, listening as the engines in the spaceship above their heads kicked into high gear. "Wait a minute," he said, eyes fixed on the ship.

Seconds later, the ship began to ascend higher and higher. Once it had reached a high enough altitude, it shot away. They watched until it was too far for them to see. Rose looked over at the Doctor to see him grinning once again. Mickey, for his part, was once again jumping up and down and had now started shouting in the general direction of the sky.

With a delighted grin, Rose dropped Jack's hand and jumped onto Mickey's back, shaking her fist at the heavens. "Yeah!" she shouted. "And don't come back!"

"It is defended!" Mickey yelled gleefully.

Rose jumped off of his back and gave him a quick hug. Then she ran over to Harriet's bemused assistant and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him noisily on the cheek. When she released him, she turned around and saw the Doctor hugging Harriet Jones while Jack and Mickey shadowboxed like children.

"Absolutely the same man," she heard Harriet say. Rose looked at the Doctor and smiled fondly. Yes, he was absolutely the same man, and she was quite relieved to find it was so.

Harriet and the Doctor both looked back up at the sky. "Are there many more out there?" Harriet asked.

"Oh, not just Sycorax," the Doctor answered. "Hundreds of species. Thousands of them. And the human race is drawing attention to itself," he added, sounding strangely proud of them. "Every day you're sending out probes and messages and signals… this planet's so _noisy_." He grinned. "You're getting noticed, more and more." He looked down at Harriet, who was now watching him with a serious look on her face. "You better get used to it," he finished.

Rose couldn't help finding the words slightly ominous, and judging from Harriet's face, she found them ominous as well. She tried to think of something to say to soften the words, but she was distracted by the sound of her mother calling her name.

"Rose!"

"Mum!" Rose said, whirling around to find her mum racing toward them from the direction of the Powell Estate. She rushed over to her and enfolded her in a bear hug.

"Speaking of trouble," she heard the Doctor say. She rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

"Oh my God," Jackie was saying. She pulled back and held Rose by the shoulders. "You did it, Rose!"

"You did it too," Rose said with a pointed glance at the Doctor. "It was the tea! Fixed him right up."

Jackie's eyes flew to the Doctor in disbelief. He smiled and nodded. "That was all I needed," he said. "Good cup o' tea."

"I said so!" Jackie exclaimed.

"And you were absolutely correct," Jack said, his usual flirty twinkle in his eye. "We should have listened to you from the start."

"Oh, you do go on," Jackie muttered. She glanced at the Doctor, then back to Rose. "Is it really him, though? Is it really the Doctor?"

"It's really him," Rose said happily.

"Oh my God," Jackie said suddenly, gaze fixed a few feet past the Doctor. "It's the bleedin' Prime Minister!"

Rose dissolved into giggles and the Doctor grinned. "Come here, you," he said to Jackie, holding out his arms for a hug.

Jackie goggled at him, which given that he'd never voluntarily _touched_ her, let alone hugged her, was a completely appropriate and understandable reaction as far as Rose was concerned. Jackie looked at Rose as if to verify that the Doctor was really _offering_ to hug her, and Rose gave her an encouraging nod. Still looking slightly flummoxed, Jackie threw her arms around the Doctor's neck and enfolded him in an enthusiastic hug. Grinning, Rose joined in and was quickly joined by Jack and Mickey. The Doctor made a noise that seemed perilously close to a giggle, which in turn made Rose giggle.

"Are you really better?" Jackie asked as the five of them separated.

"Right as rain," the Doctor said. "And in the nick of time, which was entirely due to your tea."

"You better not give me grief about my tea-making in a crisis again," she said, aiming the words mostly at Mickey but sparing a glance for Jack as well. "And you!" she said, rounding on Rose. "You left me!"

"It wasn't my fault!" Rose said indignantly, before adding, somewhat apologetically, "Sorry, though."

They chatted amicably for another minute or so and then suddenly their chatter was interrupted by the loud buzz of a giant laser beam of some kind shooting up from the ground somewhere reasonably close by. The first beam was swiftly joined by another four beams of green light, and they met at a point high above the earth. A single beam shot into space from that point.

"What is that?" Rose gasped, though she had some idea. "What's happening?"

The Doctor's face had gone dark and cold again, and he walked angrily over to Harriet Jones and her assistant. "That was murder!" he exclaimed.

"That was defense," Harriet returned, calmly. "It's adapted from alien technology," she added, voice still calm. "A ship that fell to Earth ten years ago."

"But they were leaving!" the Doctor yelled, unmoved by Harriet's excuse.

"You said yourself, Doctor… They'd go back to the stars and tell others about the Earth." She shrugged, and a hint of an apology crept into her eyes. "I'm sorry, Doctor, but you're not here all the time. You can't protect us all the time, because you come and you go and it's not like you leave a phone number where we can reach you. It happened today - people died, good men who were only trying to do good for their country and their planet. They were murdered, right in front of me, while you were sleeping." She shook her head. "When you're not here, Doctor… we have to defend ourselves."

Rose thought that actually sounded rather reasonable, although she did think in this particular case the Doctor was more in the right than Harriet was. After all, the Sycorax _had_ been leaving.

"Britain's Golden Age," the Doctor spat out, voice bitter.

"It comes with a price," Harriet said solemnly.

"I gave them the wrong warning," the Doctor said, clearly warming up to a good tirade. Rose glanced worriedly at Jack. His face was carefully blank. Knowing him as she did, she thought his line of thinking was probably somewhat closer to Harriet's than the Doctor's. He definitely did not share the Doctor's aversion to using firepower to solve problems.

"I should have told them to run," the Doctor continued. "Run as fast as they can, run and hide, because the monsters are coming. The human race," he snarled.

"Those are the people I represent," Harriet returned, holding her ground. "I did it on their behalf."

"Then I should have stopped you," the Doctor said, tone menacing.

"Whoa, whoa," Jack said, finally stepping in. "Let's not come to blows here." Rose was relieved that he'd done it; she would have except she wasn't sure what to say, wasn't sure either of them would have listened to her.

The Doctor turned on Jack, eyes hard with fury. "Don't tell me you think what she did was right."

Jack held up his hands, palms out. "I can honestly say that I don't know _what_ I would have done if I were in her position. And with all due respect, Doctor, she has something of a point about you not being here all the time."

Harriet gave Jack a small, tight smile. "If you don't like my methods, Doctor, perhaps you'd like to suggest different ones," she said, arching one eyebrow. "I'm all ears."

"I just told you," he said flatly. "You should have let them go."

"And what exactly should we do the next time an alien race decides to try to take over the planet?"

"Wait for me to show up!" the Doctor yelled.

"And if you don't!" Harriet answered, voice rising.

"Just stop!" Rose finally said, looking back and forth between the two of them. The words she'd been groping for had found their way to her tongue. "Jack is right! You're both a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and everyone - especially the people who live on this planet - will be better off if you'd stop fighting each other and worked out your differences. Five minutes ago you thought Harriet was brilliant!" Rose added, jabbing her finger in the Doctor's direction for emphasis. She turned to Harriet. "And you, you were hugging him and thinking _he's_ brilliant."

Rose went over to where Jack was standing and stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder, a united front. "We did something great today, no matter how any of us feel about that laser thing," she said.

"Exactly," Jack agreed, picking up the thread. "We've seen what we can do when we're not at odds. Why fall apart now?"

"You're not suggesting that we just… stay here, just in case something happens?" the Doctor asked incredulously.

"Of course not," Rose said. "But you know," she added, turning to Harriet, "he might not have a phone, but I do." She gestured at Jackie and Mickey, who were watching the proceedings with trepidation. "They can always reach me, no matter where I am."

"Maybe you could put measures like that laser beam further down the list of possible contingency plans if you could call us before things got that far," Jack said.

Harriet nodded slowly. "I probably could." She looked over at the Doctor. "You know I only ever do what I think is the best option. For the greater good." She gave the Doctor a knowing stare. "I'm guessing you know a little something about that kind of choice."

The Doctor clenched his jaw, and Rose worried that he wasn't going to relent. He ran his fingers through his messy hair and then rubbed his chin. "I do," he finally said. "Yes. I do." He seemed to deflate a little, some of righteous anger and indignation draining out of him. He smiled wryly at Jack and Rose. "Completely new man, and my friends are still the best part of me."

He turned back to Harriet and gave her a stern glare. "Don't let me down again, Harriet Jones. No second chances," he added, echoing his earlier words on the Sycorax spaceship.

She nodded. "You're a remarkable man, Doctor. I'll do my best. It's all I can do."

They gazed at each other intently for a few seconds, as if sizing each other up in case of future conflict. Rose felt simultaneously as if a great disaster had been avoided and as if some new disaster were waiting in the wings.

"Until we meet again, Harriet Jones," the Doctor said formally.

She gave him a sad smile. "Until then," she said. She looked over at Rose. "It was wonderful seeing you, my dear," she said. "Even if the circumstances left something to be desired."

Rose nodded. "Same to you."

"Goodbye," Harriet said, looking at each of them in turn. Then she motioned to her assistant, and the two of them headed off in the opposite direction of the Powell Estate.

The Doctor silently watched them go until they rounded a corner and went out of sight. Then he took a deep breath and looked down at his clothes. "I need to change," he announced. "New man, new clothes. _Not_ jim-jams, even if it is very Arthur Dent."

* * *

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up. I just started a new job, and settling in to that has got me a bit distracted. Just one more chapter to go after this one, and I promise I will make every effort to get it up in a timely manner. I do work Wednesday nights now, though, so it might be Thursday instead of Wednesday. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	9. Chapter 9

Jack was helping Mickey put the Tyler living room back to rights - including putting Jackie's original, non-homicidal Christmas tree back up - while Rose and her mother were in the kitchen, working together with a combination of warm camaraderie and mostly-good-natured bickering. The Doctor was still in the TARDIS wardrobe, which he had closed himself up in as soon as he'd shown Mickey and Jack a room in the TARDIS filled with furniture and told them to take anything they thought Jackie would like in the living room, since the destruction wrought by the rogue Christmas tree was mostly the Doctor's fault.

They'd chosen a simple but good-quality coffee table as well as a chair to replace the one Mickey had attempted to use to hold back the tree, and had lugged it all the way up the stairs and into the flat. Mickey had asked the Doctor if he could just park the TARDIS in the flat so they wouldn't have to carry the table as far, but the Doctor had muttered something technobabbley, and Mickey had given up.

Jack glanced at the clock on the living room wall. He estimated that the Doctor had been in the wardrobe room of the TARDIS for at least three quarters of an hour. He supposed that picking one's outfit was a bit more high-stakes when one wore essentially the same thing every day the way the Doctor did. He tried to imagine the Doctor's previous self in anything other than dark jeans, a dark jumper, and his beloved and battered leather jacket, but found it difficult to picture.

Once they'd cleared out all the debris and arranged the furniture to Jackie's liking, Mickey sat down on the couch and turned on the television, which was still set on the BBC. They were still running round-the-clock news, it seemed, as the reporters and anchors were discussing cleanup and recovery efforts in London as well as the government's official explanation for what had happened and the numerous conspiracy theories that had already sprung up to fill in the gaps in the government's story.

Jack headed towards the kitchen. Leaning against the doorway, he grinned at the sight of Rose with a kitschy apron tied on over her clothes, tossing a large bowl of salad greens with her hands.

"Need any help, ladies?" he asked.

"Are you finished in the lounge?" Jackie asked. "Oh, let me see." She bustled past Jack. "Stir that pot," she called over her shoulder.

"Yes ma'am," Jack replied, striding over to the stove. A pot of gravy simmered on one of the burners, a wooden spoon resting inside. He picked up the spoon and gently stirred, watching Rose and her salad. "How are you doing, honey?" he asked, voice low so as to not carry beyond the kitchen.

Rose smiled. "I'm fine, Jack. Things turned out fine. Everyone's safe, things are back to normal. Well, mostly. Normal as they get, I suppose." She sighed. "Why didn't he tell me? Why didn't _you_ tell me?"

Jack knew without asking for clarification that she was talking about the Doctor's regeneration and the fact that they hadn't explained it to her beforehand. "At first I assumed you already knew. After that time he almost died on Karplaxia Prime, though, I realized you didn't know, 'cause you were so upset." Jack shrugged. "I asked him why he hadn't told you, and he gave me one of his glares and said there hadn't been a proper moment."

"He should have told me. _You_ should have told me even if he wouldn't."

"I didn't want to overstep," Jack said, willing Rose to understand. "I haven't been traveling with you long, and he didn't… you were the one who wanted me here, and he was the one who accepted me being here. I didn't want to make him… stop accepting me. Because if he wanted me gone, I knew I'd be gone, and I…" he trailed off, unsure how to say what he meant.

Rose had stopped mixing the salad and was wiping her hands on her apron. "You what?" she said softly, expectantly.

"I didn't want to leave. I _don't_ want to leave. It's been a long time since I felt like I belonged anywhere or like I belonged with anyone and… I feel like that on the TARDIS, with you and the Doctor."

"You do belong," Rose said. "The Doctor knows that as much as I do," she added dismissively, as if it were obvious to her that it was so, when it was nothing of the sort to Jack.

"Does he?" Jack asked. He thought of how the Doctor's odd pronouncement at the Game Station that if the TARDIS hadn't allowed Jack to come aboard, he wouldn't have tried to change her mind, and wished he could be as sure as Rose was. "_Maybe_ he does now, but… that was only a few weeks after the Blitz, and I… I didn't want to risk it. So I let it go."

"Well, there's nothing to be done for it now," she said, adopting a businesslike tone. "Are there any other things I should know about, though?"

Jack shook his head. "Not as far as I know. But I'm not a Time Lord, I just read the file on them at the Time Agency."

"Hmm," Rose said. A buzzer sounded, and she walked over to the kitchen doorway and called out to her mum. "Mum! Turkey's ready!"

Jackie bustled in to the kitchen. She nudged Jack out of the way and pulled the turkey out of the oven. "How are you at carving turkeys?" she asked him speculatively.

He grinned. "Oh, I'm very good with my hands," he said, winking at Rose. She rolled her eyes, but he was pleased to see that she smiled as she did it. "So I imagine I'll do quite well with the carving of the turkey," he continued.

Jackie nodded briskly. "Right then, there's carving knives over there, get to it. Mickey!" she called out. "Do us a favor and set the table!"

"All right," Mickey called back from the living room.

"Rose," Jackie said, rounding on her daughter. "Help me take everything out to the table. And get the crackers from under the tree and put them on the table as well."

Jack stood at the counter in the kitchen, carving up the turkey and occasionally looking out at the table to watch Rose bustle around the table with her mum and Mickey getting everything set up. It was the sort of domestic scene that normally gave him itchy feet - which he imagined might be one reason why it was taking the Doctor so long to choose his new wardrobe. Having Christmas dinner was one thing, but helping lay out the spread was another entirely, Jack supposed.

Still, he thought as he realised Rose had caught him watching her and was smiling at him fondly, when you knew you had all of space and time at your disposal, it wasn't hard to stop and spend an evening being domestic with someone like Rose Tyler.

* * *

The Doctor flipped through racks of suits in the TARDIS wardrobe room, trying to find the perfect one for his new body. The last time he'd been in this situation, he'd been too shattered, too raw to do anything but reach for something dark and shielding. He'd ended up in denim and leather and it had worked for him, but this time he wanted something different. Something brighter.

Something that might make Rose look him up and down the way she did Jack?

He shook his head. _Not going there_, he thought. Or at least he wasn't going to _admit_ he was going there. Just like he wasn't going to admit how much he'd thought about how he'd kissed Rose to save her from the time vortex in the relatively short time he'd spent actually conscious since doing so.

No, he was going to focus on the task at hand, which was picking the perfect suit for his new body. He'd already decided that he wanted a suit, which was a big enough decision itself when one considered the endless variety of clothing available, but Rose and Jack had both smoothed their hands over the lapels of his pajama top after hugging him and assessing his health after his fight with the Sycorax leader, and he'd rather liked it. Also he was rather skinny this time around, and he thought perhaps a suit might lend him some of the _presence_ his lack of physical bulk wouldn't provide.

He pulled out a suit and held it in front of himself experimentally, then wrinkled his nose upon looking in the mirror. Too military, he decided. He was done looking like soldier. The Time War was over - Rose had made sure of that, and the Doctor was going to do his damndest to remember it.

A flash of brown caught his eye as he flipped past several more suits, and a smile began to creep over his face. He grabbed the suit and held it up, glancing over at the mirror to confirm his suspicion. _Yes_, he thought. _Perfect_. He looked over at the coats hanging nearby and smiled in delight at the sight of the one Janis Joplin had given him. He'd painstakingly modified the pockets to be transdimensional, which would come in quite handy, and it would go fantastically with the suit. With a manic grin, he grabbed the coat and turned on his heel. Snagging a pair of white high-top trainers on the fly, he dashed off to select a shirt and tie to finish off the look.

A short while later he was back in front of the full-length mirror, hands shoved in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels as he evaluated the finished product. He wore a crisp white shirt beneath a slim brown suit with thin pinstripes of pale blue. After considering an obscene number of ties, many of which were still hanging on the mirror, he'd chosen a brown one with rich embroidery. The long duster coat from Janis and pleasantly-worn trainers completed the outfit.

He turned sideways in one direction and then the other, trying to get a look at his back. Then he leaned forward, peering closely at his face. _Freckles_, he thought. _That's new_. He rubbed his hands over his face experimentally. _I think I like it, though_. He ran his tongue over his teeth. _Still a little weird_. He turned his head this way and that, examining it from different angles. _Not bad, Doctor_, he thought. _Not bad at all. Maybe you're getting better at this regeneration lark in your old age after all, even if you didn't manage to be ginger_.

With a sniff and a nod, he wandered off in the direction of the console room. He puttered around there for a few minutes. He told himself he was just checking to make sure that the Sycorax weren't returning (they weren't) and all the pilot fish Santas were gone (they were), but if he was being honest, he was stalling. Rose might have finally accepted that he really was still the Doctor, but that didn't mean she'd forgiven him for failing to mention regeneration before it became an issue. Plus, Jackie was no doubt organizing something wildly domestic, like Christmas dinner. Not to mention, at some point he was going to have to address the issue of Jack's immortality and the fact that Rose was responsible for it.

Yeah, that was going to go _really_ well.

There was a time, he thought, long ago - perhaps not so long ago, even - when he might have run away rather than face such terrifyingly domestic and emotional prospects. Better to run than admit to how attached he was to a pair of humans and their tiny dramas. Better to pick up someone new, someone easier to leave behind. Now, though…

He glanced around the console room. A leather jacket of Jack's and a denim jacket of Rose's hung on the coat rack. Some of Jackie's supplies for waiting out the Sycorax were still strewn around on the grating. Rose's favorite sweater was draped over the back of the captain's bench. The Doctor picked it up, sniffed it experimentally. It smelled like Rose, with a faint hint of Jack's cologne - the last time she'd worn it, she'd spent several hours tied up with Jack in an alien prison, the Doctor remembered with a faint smile.

No, he thought. He definitely couldn't run. He didn't want to run. Not from Rose, and not even from Jack, even if it did feel strange to look at him. The TARDIS was apparently willing to let him on board, even when the Doctor was in distress, and Rose would probably have several choice words for the Doctor if he tried to kick Jack out anyway.

He set the sweater back down on the bench, made a few minor adjustments at the console (_still stalling, Doctor_, he thought), and then took a deep breath.

"I expect it's time for dinner," he murmured.

* * *

The table was set, the turkey was carved, and everyone was present except for the Doctor. Rose glanced at the door, then exchanged wry smiles with Jack.

"I think we can go ahead and get started without the Doctor, Mum," she said, turning to look at Jackie. "There's no telling how long he'll be."

Jackie nodded and gestured at the table. "Then sit down, you three. Christmas dinner won't eat itself!"

Rose slid into a chair across from the one Mickey had plopped into as soon as Jackie had started speaking. Jack took one of the spots next to Rose, and Jackie chose to leave the other seat next to her for the Doctor, which Rose thought was rather generous of her, all things considered.

"Right, no ceremony here," Jackie said when no one moved to take any food. "Dig in!"

With smiles on their faces and meaningless chatter on their lips, they began to serve themselves. They passed dishes across the table, passed serving utensils when the platters were too heavy to make the rounds, and Rose found herself feeling truly happy for the first time in what felt like days.

The sound of the front door opening and closing interrupted the jovial scene, and Rose looked up towards the hall, fork arrested halfway to her mouth. The Doctor was standing a few feet away, and she gave his new clothes a quick once-over before looking up at his face to find him gazing intently at her and Jack. She smiled, tentatively at first but then wider, bigger. Because he was the Doctor, _her Doctor_, and he was alive and he was whole and he was _here_. For Christmas dinner. An answering grin broke out over his face. Rose patted the chair next to her.

"Sit," she said. "We're just getting started, everything's still hot."

"The food _and_ the company," Jack added. Rose elbowed him, though she also didn't trouble to hide her grin.

The Doctor took his seat, still smiling.

"Help yourself," Rose said. She nodded towards the food at the center of the table. "We'll eat, and then do the crackers."

"Sounds lovely," the Doctor said. Rose narrowed her eyes slightly, searching his new face for the slightest hint that he might be being sarcastic, but his smile appeared genuine and the gleam in his eyes happy rather than sardonic.

The meal passed uneventfully, which for Rose was rather a relief given the way the last few days had gone. By the time they were scraping their plates clean and Jackie was fretting about leftovers, they all had paper crowns on their heads - Jack's was blue, the Doctor's red, and Rose's pink - and they were pleasantly full of turkey and all the fixings. Rose glanced over at the television, which Mickey had once again left on with the volume muted, and caught sight of Harriet Jones.

"Look," she said, "it's Harriet Jones!"

They all shifted to get a better look. While Mickey turned up the volume, Rose saw the Doctor pull a pair of spectacles with thick black plastic frames out of his pocket and slip them on. _Well_, she thought. _That's new. And… a little bit foxy_. She glanced at Jack and waggled her eyebrows. He winked and nodded.

On the news, Harriet was fielding questions at a press conference. "Can you tell us anything about the lasers?"

Harriet smiled. "Some sort of fancy light show, I assume," she said. "A celebration, no doubt. To borrow from the great Agatha Christie, I suppose they do it with mirrors." There was a buzz as the group of reporters all vied for the chance to ask the next question. "Yes, George," Harriet said, pointing to someone in the front row.

"During your address earlier today, you spoke to someone called the Doctor. Is that a codename?"

The phone rang, and with a frustrated noise, Jackie bustled in to the kitchen to answer it whilst the rest of the group stayed glued to the BBC to hear Harriet's answer.

"Well, George, if it were a codename I wouldn't say so on national news now, would I?" she smiled again, and there was a wave of laughter amongst the gathered reporters. "The Doctor," Harriet said after the laughter died down, "is a friend. A friend to me and a friend to us all."

Jackie came back into the living room. "It's Beth," she said, gesturing with the phone. "She says go and look outside."

"Why?" Rose asked, glancing back at her mum curiously. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor remove his glasses and put them back in his pocket and felt curiously disappointed.

"I don't know," Jackie said, sounding slightly exasperated. "Just go outside and look. Come on, shift!"

With a sigh, Rose got to her feet and headed towards the front door of the flat, the boys trailing behind her. They all made their way down into the courtyard of the Powell Estate, where it seemed like at least half the residents were also gathered, chatting and laughing. Although Rose could see stars - and perhaps meteors? - in the sky, it seemed to be snowing.

"Oh, that's beautiful," she said with a smile. She turned to the Doctor. "What are they, meteors?"

The Doctor's face, in contrast to the general gaiety around them, was somewhat grim. "It's the spaceship breaking up in the atmosphere," he said quietly. "And this is isn't snow," he added, "it's ash."

Rose grimaced. "Okay, not so beautiful."

Jack squeezed Rose's shoulder comfortingly. "Still kind of beautiful. You have to find beauty even in terrible things, or you won't be able to do what we do for long."

"I suppose," she said.

"This is a brand new planet Earth," the Doctor declared, as if he hadn't been listening to his companions at all. "No denying the existence of aliens now… everyone saw it." He turned to face Jack and Rose. "Everything's new," he added, grinning. "Now _that's_ beautiful."

_Okay_, Rose thought, _maybe he was listening_. "And what about you?" she asked, somewhat tentatively. "What are you gonna do next?" Almost unconsciously, she reached for Jack, who was still standing slightly behind her. His hand slid reassuringly into hers.

"Well," the Doctor said slowly, "back in the TARDIS… same old life…"

Rose took a deep breath. "On your own?"

For his part, the Doctor looked somewhat taken aback at her question, then nervous. "Why? Don't you want to come?" He looked back and forth between Rose and Jack's faces.

"Well, yeah," Rose said, without even glancing at Jack.

"Do you, though?"

"Of course," Jack affirmed. "Of course we do."

The Doctor shuffled his feet a little. "I just thought…" he looked up and met Rose's gaze. "'Cos I'd changed…"

"Yeah," Rose mumbled. "I… I thought 'cos you'd changed…" She glanced at Jack briefly then looked back to the Doctor. "I thought you might not want me… us… around anymore."

The Doctor's worried look dissolved into a happy grin. "Oh, I'd love you to come!" Rose could hear the sincerity in his tone, and she squeezed Jack's hand and grinned at him to share her happiness with him.

"You're never gonna stay, are you?" Mickey said from behind them. Rose and Jack both twisted to look over their shoulders at Mickey, finding him staring at the ground, kicking softly at pebbles.

"There's just so much out there," Rose said gently. "So much to see." She met Jack's eyes briefly before looking back at Mickey, who was now looking up at them. "I've just got to, Mick," she finished.

Mickey smiled sadly. "Yeah," he said softly. "I reckon you do."

Jackie made a _pfft_ noise and rolled her eyes. "Well _I_ reckon you're mad, all three of you." She gestured widely so as to include the Doctor, Rose, and Jack in her declaration. "It's like you go _looking_ for trouble!"

The Doctor grinned again, sidled up to Jackie, and bumped her shoulder companionably. "Ah, trouble's just the bits in between!" He slid his arm around her shoulders and looked up at the sky, causing her to do the same. "It's all waiting out there, Jackie." He pointed up to the stars. "It's brand new to me." He brought his arm back down and shoved it into his pocket. "All those planets… creatures and horizons… I haven't seen them yet! Not with these eyes!"

With a final grin at Jackie - she shook her head and rolled her eyes in response - the Doctor hop-stepped over to where Rose and Jack still stood hand-in-hand. He stepped up next to Rose's free hand and looked down at her face, smiling broadly. "And it is gonna be… _fantastic_."

Rose smiled at the sound of his former self's favorite word gracing his new self's lips. Then he held out his hand - the hand he'd grown in front of her eyes just a few hours earlier. With a wry grin, she pointed at it. "That hand of yours still gives me the creeps," she said.

Saying nothing, the Doctor wiggled his fingers and smiled wider. Without any further hesitation, Rose reached out and slipped her hand into his. As she stood in the courtyard, the TARDIS close by, holding hands with the two men she loved most in the universe, Rose thought that even with the whole aliens-almost-taking-over-the-planet thing, this might be the best Christmas she'd ever had.

"So," she said, tugging on Jack and the Doctor's hands to bring them both closer to her, "where are we gonna go first?"

The Doctor glanced at her and then at Jack, then looked up at the sky, a look of consideration on his face. "Umm… that way." He pointed up at the sky. "No, hold on…" He adjusted the direction he was pointing ever so slightly to the right. "That way."

"That way?" Rose asked.

The Doctor made an indistinct interrogatory sound and looked back and forth between Rose and Jack, obviously waiting for their approval.

Jack smiled warmly. "Looks good to me," he said.

"Yeah," Rose said, looking up at the Doctor with a soft smile. "That way."

* * *

**Author's Note:** And that's the end! I hope y'all enjoyed it; please let me know what you thought and if you'd like to see more S2 episode rewrites with Jack added to the mix :D


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